A 34-year-old man has been hit and killed by a car in Melbourne just hours after he was refused admission into a sobering up centre.
The man was found intoxicated on Black Forest Rd, Wyndham Vale by police in the early hours of Friday morning.
The officers, following the state’s public drunkenness legislation, called the sobering up centre but he was refused transportation.
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7NEWS understands the man wasn’t picked up by sobering up centre staff as he was deemed unsuitable.
Unable to arrest or transport the man, again under the state’s new laws, the officers spent more than an hour with him before they were forced to attend another incident.
After police left it is understood the man found his way back out onto the road and was lying down when he was hit and dragged by a Honda Accord.
Secretary of The Police Association Victoria Wayne Gatt told 7NEWS in a statement that it is “supporting two of its members who have been involved in a death following recent police intervention”.
“Our full, unequivocal support is behind these two officers, who came to work to help and protect people and who were prevented from doing that because of the Government’s recently reformed public intoxication laws,” he said.
“A man is dead and the community should be asking the questions that we were asking three years ago and have been asking every day since.
“Our thoughts are with the man’s family and with our members who will all be traumatised by this preventable tragedy.”