TORONTO – Her condition immediately appeared desperate and the doctors’ attempts to save her life were useless. The eight-year-old girl hit by a car along with a group of nine other people – mostly children – did not make it on Tuesday evening in London.
A chilling scene witnessed by numerous witnesses: driving the vehicle that after hitting a car climbed on the sidewalk knocking down a group of pedestrians like skittles, there was a 76-year-old woman.
It was 6:45 a.m. on Tuesday night when the tragedy unfolded on Riverside Drive: six girls remain hospitalized. The motorist, on the other hand, did not suffer any injuries.
Today the police provided some details on the dynamics of the accident: the car at the wheel of which the elderly woman was at the wheel, arrived near Wonderland Road, hit a car stopped at the red light. “She then crossed the intersection, climbed onto the sidewalk and slammed first into a pole, then into a sapling and finished her run on a group of pedestrians who were walking east on the north side of Riverside Drive,” Officer Sandasha Bough told reporters.
A woman and four girls remain hospitalized in fair condition, while the condition of a child is not a cause for concern. A teenager and two other girls were treated in hospital for minor injuries, but have since been discharged.
Girl Guides of Canada confirmed that some of the victims are part of the organization that is the largest facility for women and girls in the country. “Girl Guides of Canada is in contact with local volunteers to provide all possible support and we will help the London Police Service in any way possible with their investigations,” the group said.
Bough said it was not yet clear what caused the driver’s car to lose control. “We can’t talk about what happened yet because there is an ongoing investigation,” he said, “there are a number of statements that have yet to be recorded and agents from our central traffic management center are working hard in relation to this investigation.” So far, however, no arrests have been made and no charges have been made.
It is important, at this stage of the investigation, to be able to collect as much information and testimonies as possible in order to reconstruct what happened.
Many residents of the area who witnessed the incident told CTV News London they were “shocked” by what they saw. The police ask anyone with information about it to contact the investigators. “Right now an investigation is underway – said Bough – we are asking anyone who was in the area to provide us with information if they saw something, if they heard something, if they were on the spot because another vehicle could have been hit at the intersection”.
