The 19-year-old woman involved in a crash at a busy Langley City intersection on Tuesday afternoon was listed in “critical but stable” condition in hospital at 1 p.m. on Wednesday.
Two motorists, one of them a police officer, jumped out of their vehicles and ran to the aid of the woman who was trapped in her white Honda Accord after it was in collision with a red Ford F350 pickup in the intersection of Fraser Highway and 203 Street.
The crash happened at about 3 p.m. on Tuesday.
The bystander used what appeared to be a tire iron in an unsuccessful bid to pry open the driver’s side door to free the trapped woman.
Langley City firefighters arrived and used the Jaws of Life to lift away the buckled door and frame.
Within minutes, the intersection was teeming with police cars, a fire truck and two ambulances, and dozens of pedestrians, some of whom were more than a block away when they heard the sound of the collision.
The Honda demolished a portion of the railing surrounding the sidewalk patio of Me ‘n Ed’s Pizza.
The woman was conscious as she was taken on a stretcher to one of the ambulances which transported her to Alice Brown Elementary, on 200 Street and 44 Avenue, where a B.C. Air Ambulance was waiting to take her to hospital.
Several witnesses told The Times that the Accord driver was in the intersection, facing north and waiting to turn left onto Fraser Highway when the collision with the southbound Ford occurred. The pickup driver was not injured.
Both vehicles ended up facing the east wall of the pizza restaurant.
Eyewitness Steven Lambert (pictured at left) said the collision occurred as the traffic light was turning yellow.
The Accord was turning left when it was hit by the truck, Lambert told The Times.
“He [the truck] was going fairly fast,” Lambert said.
Another witness said she heard a quick screeching of brakes, then heard the collision and saw the front of the truck lift up over the car.
The two vehicles smashed into a trash receptacle and came to rest against the restaurant, narrowly missing pedestrian Liivi Blumm.
A shaken Blumm told The Times that she ran without looking back.
“I heard this terrible braking noise and a bang,” Blumm told the Times.
“I knew something was happening behind me. It really shook me up because I’ve been hit by a car before.”
Road closures extended to four blocks of the crash site until about 10 p.m.
Investigators from the Integrated Collision Analysis Reconstruction Service were on the scene into the evening hours, and Langley RCMP’s Victim Services personnel are offered support to witnesses upset by the crash.
Cpl. Holly Marks of the Langley RCMP said on Wednesday that the ICARS investigators believe that “both parties bear some responsibility for the collision.”
– with files from Dan Ferguson
