Reports have emerged of just how much care a 13-year-old boy received after he was struck by a pickup as he walked to school on Thursday morning.
However, many students who were on a school bus or being driven to school by their parents were traumatized by what they saw.
A parent told The Times that the badly injured boy’s name is Demetri, who is in Grade 8. The other student is known as Tanner.
Witnesses say that the driver of a pickup truck turned left from 48 Avenue onto northbound 208 Street, striking the boy, his sister, and a boy of about 11 as they were at the halfway mark of the crosswalk.
The ‘walk’ signal was in their favour, witnesses observed. Many people stopped their cars and phoned 911.
One of the first on the scene was Township firefighter Scott Brewer. Sharon Merritt was driving her three children to school when she came upon the accident, saw Brewer jump out of his vehicle and race to the stricken boy’s side.
“He bent over the child and rendered first aid,” Merritt said, adding that Brewer then called for his son to bring a coat to place over the boy, who suffered head injuries and a broken femur.
Fifty minutes after the incident, a helicopter took off from the parking lot of Langley Evangelical Free Church, carrying the boy and his mother to B.C. Children’s Hospital.
Merritt, a neighbour of the Brewer family, praised the firefighter. “It’s just like him . . . he always does little things like this.”
Noting that some people object to the cost of having fire halls manned around the clock, Merritt said that firefighters “take good care of us and our families, and this (Thursday’s accident) is a good example.”
Merritt said that the woman who was driving the pickup also jumped out of her vehicle and ran to the boy’s side.
“She was just hysterical.”
In a letter to the editor (see page 7), writer T. Williams said that she was getting her children ready for school when there was frantic knocking on her door by someone asking if she would drive the mothers of the children who were in the crosswalk to the scene.
“When we arrived, there was the most emergency response to an accident that I had ever seen,” Williams wrote.
Thanking emergency personnel, she urged drivers to slow down.
Stafford principal Gary McCuaig was also at the scene, talking to parents. When he returned to school, he informed students, teachers and staff about the accident, and school counsellor Mike de Wit talked to Grade 7 and 8 students, assuring them of his support if students needed it.
Help from the RCMP’s Victim Services division and school district staff was also offered, McCuaig said.
A newsletter accompanied by a pamphlet on pedestrian safety was sent home with every student.
