Mysterious items, including clothing and fabric, were removed from the crash site where Olympian Melissa Hoskins was reportedly hit by her husband’s car.
Footage filmed by Channel 7 at the scene of the accident in the northern Adelaide suburb of Medindie after 8pm on December 30 showed clothing and possibly a towel strewn on the road.
The items appeared in the middle of Avenel Gardens Road next to police who attended the scene and applied yellow paint marks to the bitumen where Mrs Hoskins was allegedly fatally struck by her husband, champion cyclist Rohan Dennis.
The clothing was collected into a pile and photographed by an officer before a paramedic picked up the items and carried them away – presumably to be processed by police.
One item appeared to be a red beach towel with white trim and the other items appeared to be clothing in shades of green, white, yellow and maroon.
It has been reported that Ms Hoskins somehow ended up on the bonnet of Dennis’ Volkswagen Amarok V6 before suffering catastrophic injuries.
Items strewn across the road following the incident in which Olympian Melissa Hoskins was reportedly fatally struck by her husband’s ute have been removed from the scene
Melissa Hoskins’ uncle Graham posted this photo of his niece with her aunt Anke Hoskins Bergmann and paid tribute to the “beautiful and genuine soul that immediately made you smile, relax, laugh”
A paramedic removed what appears to be a fringed beach towel and clothing left on the road after Melissa Hoskins was injured and later died in Adelaide on December 30.
Ms Hoskins was placed in an ambulance and taken to the Royal Adelaide Hospital, where the 32-year-old died shortly afterwards.
All items were removed from the scene and South Australian police seized Dennis’ vehicle worth $70,000, while Adelaide CIB detectives pursued the world cycling champion over the death of his wife.
He is currently on police bail and is due to appear in the Adelaide Magistrates Court in March on charges of causing her death by dangerous driving, careless driving and endangering her life.
The incident happened just yards from the $2.45 million home that Ms Hoskins, her husband and their children had recently moved into after buying and renting it out in 2019.
Dennis, 33, had competed on the European cycling circuit in recent years as the young family commuted between Adelaide and Spain and Andorra, where they lived in the village of La Massana.
He retired last year and the couple were due to be the faces of the family’s ride through the Adelaide CBD this Saturday as part of the Australian cycling tour Down Under, held every year in South Africa’s capital.
However, race officials scratched Dennis from the ride after Melissa’s death.
The couple appeared to be starting a bright new chapter of their lives following Rohan Dennis’s retirement from cycling, with plans to start their own vineyard and wine label.
The scene of the accident, marked by police in yellow, was just meters around the corner from where Melissa Hoskins lived with husband Rohan Dennis and their two young children.
Melissa Hoskins’ parents, Amanda and Peter, have released a statement about her death and the fact that her funeral will take place in her hometown of Perth, ahead of a memorial service in Adelaide following the end of the Tour Down Under.
The two-time Olympic pursuit cyclist’s uncle, Graham Hoskins, posted a heartfelt statement on Facebook about “the untimely passing of… our beautiful ‘Lissa’
“We are all absolutely incredibly devastated, especially given the tragic circumstances surrounding her death,” he wrote, “I still can’t believe it’s real.
‘Anyone who met Melissa, even in passing, knows what a beautiful and genuine soul she was, and who immediately made you smile, relax, laugh and feel at ease.
‘Melissa is proof that achieving and performing, even at the absolutely elite levels of the world stage, does not mean you cannot also be a decent, real and relatable person… always down to earth, always sincere, always caring and compassionate and with the time for everyone.’
Melissa Hoskins was a mother of two young children, a five-year-old son and her daughter born in 2021.
Cycling luminaries including Anna Meares have expressed shock and sadness at Ms Hoskins’ death, with competitors at the AusCycling Road National Championships in Ballarat observing a minute’s silence last weekend.