A 35-year-old Lanztville man has died of his injuries following a single-vehicle crash on Highway 19 Sunday (June 3).
Sgt. Darrin Ramey of the Central Vancouver Island Traffic Services said the call came in around 8:15 p.m. for a single-vehicle collision in the southbound lanes of Highway 19 between Corcan Road and Horne Lake Road. Ramey said the vehicle lost control and left the road to the right side of the highway before continuing about 30 metres down an embankment.
The driver, the only occupant of the vehicle, was ejected, he said. But when RCMP arrived on scene, Ramey said, there were clothes strewn about inside the car that were “consistent with a child.”
“We actually brought in a police dog to search the area to see if there had been a child who had also been ejected. The search turned up nothing and then when we did contact a relative of the driver, it turned out the child in question was fine and not in the vehicle at the time.”
Ramey said the investigation is ongoing and there will be a mechanical inspection on the vehicle as well as an autopsy on the driver to help determine why he would have veered off the road.
“This is eerily close to a fatal collision we had on Highway 19 near Northwest Bay Road about two months ago. Again, it was a single-vehicle crash to the right and the person was ejected and died of his injuries,” said Ramey, adding that the Oceanside RCMP has attended three fatals in its jurisdiction in the last two months.
“Driving is one of the most dangerous things that we do every day and we have to take it very, very seriously because here are the obvious consequences.”
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