Retired WA police officer says he will never forget aftermath of fatal crashes
A car had rolled and killed an 18-year-old passenger, and it was up to the then-senior constable to break the news to her family.
"The lights were off as I approached her parents' farm," he said.
"As I got closer, the lights came on and all the family raced out — they were yelling 'happy birthday' and 'surprise'.
The 77-year-old, who spent most of his working life on the traffic beat in regional Western Australia, said this was one of the hardest parts of the job.
He said people's reactions ranged from shock to anger, and that some physically lashed out in despair.
"You had to show compassion, but you had to switch off and say, 'Well, this is part of the job and we have to do it,'" Mr Chitty said.
"Some just broke down, cried and even fainted.
"When I went home, I would sit on the bed with my wife to debrief. And then the next day, you're up and away again."
Some of Mr Chitty's worst memories of fatal car crashes have resurfaced as WA goes through one of its worst years on record for road deaths.
In 2025 so far, 120 people have died on the state's roads.
About half of the incidents happened in regional areas.
Mr Chitty's advice to motorists was to know their vehicle and always drive to the conditions.
"All I can say is, just learn to drive correctly and remember you're driving a lethal weapon that kills," he said.
In 1997, Mr Chitty launched a road safety program in Bridgetown.
The Mystery Tour of Life took high school students through every step of the aftermath of a fatal car crash.
Mr Chitty said he wanted to reiterate to young drivers the realities of what could happen behind the wheel.
He said some teenagers fainted.
"We copped a bit of flak when we first started because people thought we were being too hard on the kids," Mr Chitty said.
"But I said, 'I'm not backing off, this is life.'
"And in 13 years, there were still fatalities out of Bridgetown, but none of them were the kids involved with the Mystery Tour of Life, and I was quite happy with that."
The program has run for the past two decades in conjunction with St John WA, WA Police and Bridgetown Volunteer Fire and Rescue.
Since retiring from the police force, Mr Chitty has spent the past 15 years as a bus driver, taking students to school in the country town of Manjimup.
Some of the students on the bus are children of people Mr Chitty used to assess for a driver's licence — a task that used to be within a regional police officer's remit.
"Sometimes they get on the bus and say, 'Oh, it's you Chitty', and I go, 'Yep,'" Mr Chitty laughed.
"I was always quite hard on them because I was the one who used to go to the prangs.
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ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
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Serious allegations had been made against him, concerning a series of scams that involved cryptocurrencies, hacked social media accounts, and millions of dollars in takings. With Australians losing an estimated $1.3 billion to investment scams in 2023, it was a rare chance to see the other side of this equation: the perspective of an Australian scammer. Over the years, Serpent has reinvented himself multiple times, but through every incarnation, his real identity remained unknown. I decided to try to track him down. The obvious place to start was his teenage years. Serpent was once a celebrated gamer, amassing hundreds of thousands of subscribers on his YouTube account, where he posted highlights of himself playing the video game Fortnite. But he was caught cheating in June 2020 and became the subject of a minor scandal in the online gaming world. Articles were written about his e-sports team dropping him, and Epic Games banning him from Fortnite forever. A 2020 article discussing Serpent's cheating scandal. ( ) In a public apology, in which he admitted to cheating, Serpent explained that his choices had been "blurred by the money, influence and experiences" of the pro-gamer lifestyle. Half a decade later, he appeared to have succumbed to the same set of vices. But if the barrage of emails hitting my inbox was anything to go by, it seemed unlikely he was going to apologise for it. A 'pump and dump' scheme Following his exit from professional gaming, Serpent restyled himself as an online vigilante. He outed scammers in long threads on Twitter, tracing the flow of cryptocurrencies from scam websites to their operators. He even posted screenshots of himself confronting the perpetrators on social media. "Somebody get this man a cape already," wrote one follower. "Wow, this is impressive detective work!" posted another. As his profile grew, Serpent started throwing his clout around by promoting a strange new cryptocurrency. It was called $ERROR coin, and he had invented it himself. Like other bespoke cryptocurrencies, Serpent's creation served no function in reality. Its value was purely speculative, so it was worth exactly as much as everyone else thought it was. To exploit this, Serpent hyped $ERROR up as the next big thing in crypto, before launching it publicly in March 2024. Serpent spreads the word about $ERROR coin on X. ( ) Word spread, and investors got wind. Not wanting to miss out, many of them bought in. The hype cycle was now in full effect. As $ERROR coin became increasingly valuable, Serpent's stash was suddenly worth serious money. And that's when he hung everyone else out to dry. Serpent started selling his own coins as fast as he could, flooding the market and sending the value of $ERROR coin down to zero. By the time he was done, investors were left with a pile of worthless digital coins. This playbook is so common it has a name: a "pump and dump" scheme. In orchestrating one of his own and making off with an estimated $900,000, Serpent shredded his reputation in the crypto community. In the fallout, he was accused of further financial trickery involving a duplicate currency and fraudulent marketing tactics to "shill" his coin. The mob turns on Serpent The thing about cryptocurrency is that every transaction is recorded publicly. In the wake of the $ERROR fiasco, an infamous crypto-sleuth called ZachXBT followed the trail of digital breadcrumbs that Serpent had left behind. He found that the former pro-gamer had been involved in an earlier scam, one that looked suspiciously similar to the $ERROR coin scheme. The website promoting another meme coin associated with Serpent. ( ) This other coin had supposedly been subject to a pump and dump scheme as well, with a group of perpetrators making off with around $US1.3 million. When ZachXBT posted evidence of Serpent's involvement, the mob was quick to turn on its former hero. Serpent found himself being publicly shamed in the same way he had done to others. "If you buy my plane ticket," wrote one user who claimed to have lost money on the scam. "I will go to Australia and [mess with] those two. !!!" "He had a bad reputation back when he used to play in Fortnite," chimed in another. "Rats never change." They were angry, but there was little they could do; Serpent's financial trickery fell into a grey area, since it had taken place in an essentially unregulated market. This was months before the president of the United States would mint a cryptocurrency in his own image, and thrust the concept of a "meme coin" into the mainstream. Donald Trump created his own "meme coin" in early 2025. ( ) After $TRUMP coin was launched, the US financial regulator decided that bespoke coins were "akin to collectables" rather than financial instruments in need of regulation. This loose approach to crypto laws has the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) concerned. The regulator has made cryptocurrency scams an enforcement priority in 2025. "Any weakening of [crypto] regulation is of concern for us," ACCC chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb has said. Serpent's misdeeds had been insulated from the real world, where fraudulent behaviour has real consequences. But it wouldn't stay that way for long. The gambling connection After the heat died down from ZachXBT's exposé, Serpent got into the habit of live-streaming with friends. Notably, he was seen making serious bets on an online casino that allows customers to play using cryptocurrencies. He kept the broadcast going as he gambled, and forgot to turn it off as he moved money in and out of his account, sometimes as much as $US200,000 at a time. A screenshot of Serpent depositing money into on a live-stream. ( ) An owner of a rival casino, who did not want to be identified, confirmed that crypto scammers are often big gamblers. "These kids are dime a dozen in the casino space," he told me. "They scam a bunch of people, clean their funds … and gamble their money away." During his gambling sessions, Serpent momentarily flashed the addresses of his cryptocurrency accounts onto the screen. This was all ZachXBT needed to dig deeper into Serpent's online activity. The sleuth followed the digital breadcrumbs, uncovering financial connections between Serpent and a string of further crypto scams. These involved more serious crimes, including hacked accounts and fraud. The most surreal began with a rogue post from McDonald's official Instagram account, promoting a McDonald's-themed meme coin called $GRIMACE. A curious ad for the $GRIMACE meme coin. ( ) Apparently believing it to be officially endorsed by McDonald's, investors were duped into buying almost $US700,000 worth of the coin. 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