Candlelight vigil to honour lives lost and affected by horror crash

By Murray Silby

Apr 24, 2023

‘**I love you so much’:** Tributes for the five people who died in a fatal road accident at the intersection of Labuan Rd and Murray Valley Hwy near Yarroweyah on Thursday, April 20. The tributes include photos and a message from the son of Debbie Markey, who died in the crash along with five foreign workers. Ms Markey's son Daniel wrote: ‘I love you so much Mum. I hope you're partying away up there — your loving son Daniel.’ Photo by Gabriel Garcia

A candlelight vigil will be held in Cobram to honour the five people who lost their lives in a horror crash on the Murray Valley Hwy near Yarroweyah on Thursday, April 20.

Four foreign workers and a local woman, 60-year-old Debbie Markey, lost their lives when a Mercedes sedan collided with the Nissan Navara they were travelling in, forcing them into the path of an oncoming truck.

The driver of the Mercedes, 29-year-old Christopher Dillon Joannidis, of the Melbourne suburb of Doncaster, has been charged with five counts of dangerous driving causing death in the accident.

He has not entered pleas to any of the charges.

**Memorial:** Floral tributes at the scene of crash near Yarroweyah. Photo by Gabriel Garcia

One of the organisers of the vigil, Megan Stillard, lives one block away from the crash site and said she wanted to make sure the lives of those lost did not pass without due acknowledgement.

“We want to pay respect to them and their families, and just honour them, and we thought that this might be a way to do that rather than it just being something that happened and they’re gone,” she said.

“We want to acknowledge what happened, we want to come together and we want to show the families love.”

**Acknowledgement:** Megan Stillard, from Yarroweyah, is one of the organisers behind a candlelight vigil for the five people who died in the crash. Mrs Stillard says she wanted to organise the event to show love to the families impacted.

Mrs Stillard said people in the surrounding region had been struggling with the scale of the tragedy, even if they did not directly know the people involved.

“Just talking to neighbours, talking to people in town, people from the next towns, everyone is struggling,” she said.

“Even though people I talk to didn’t know personally anyone involved, they’re just struggling to come to terms with that kind of loss and we don’t want it to just happen and be forgotten.”

Mrs Stillard said the Labuan Rd/Murray Valley Hwy intersection was a notorious piece of road, which was leaving a lasting impact.

“It just keeps happening on that road, bad crashes,” she said.

“I mean it’s a notoriously bad road. It’s just so unbearable. They were, apparently, just such lovely people.

“It could have been anyone, just going to work, coming home.”