In what can only be described as a freak incident, a 38 year old woman received fractures to her skull when she was hit in the head by a golf ball.
Two weeks ago the mother of two was a passenger in the front seat of a taxi, on her way home from a birthday party in Melbourne. At about 2am on February 28, as they drove past the Sanctuary Golf Course, a golf ball came flying through the open front window of the taxi, striking Natasha Cossell in the head.
She required surgery to remove the bone fragments from her skull, and has been recovering in hospital for the past two weeks.
For several days following the surgery she has had trouble speaking and walking. Doctors are unable to give a clear time line of how long she will need to recover completely, allowing her to return to a normal life.
Cossell has two young sons aged six and seven. All she remembers of the incident is the sudden severe pain in the side of her face. It is suspected by Police that the ball was either thrown or hit at the taxi by someone skylarking around, as there had been other similar incidents reported.
Cossell is hoping that whoever threw the ball will come forward, and that they can then see firsthand just how it has affected her life, and those of her children.
“My children have been without me for nearly two weeks, and that’s not right,” she commented to reporters during an interview on Friday.
Questions have been raised as to why police did not respond or assign an investigator to the case for nearly two weeks. Detective Senior Constable Arnaud Lenferna could not explain the delay, but was hopeful that the investigation would not be hindered as a result.
