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The scene of a fatal collision on Albert street west of Bank street in Ottawa, Ont., Sep. 16, 2010.
Photograph by: Christopher Pike, The Ottawa Citizen
OTTAWA — A 20-year-old man is in custody after a horrific crash Thursday night that killed a 36-year-old man and left his 35-year-old wife in "extremely critical condition" as they waited for a bus on Albert Street.
The couple and a friend — a woman possibly in her late 20s, paramedics said — had been waiting for the No. 87 bus at a temporary OC Transpo stop on Albert between Bank and Kent streets at about 10:30 p.m. It was drizzling at the time.
Albert Street was closed overnight while police investigated the crash, but has since reopened.
The 20-year-old driver of the car was in police custody and being questioned Friday morning, said Const. J.P. Vincelette.
Witness Barry Horeczy, and editor with Postmedia news, had just finished work and was waiting with about six others at the temporary stop, all of whom he didn’t know.
A black two-door Nissan 300ZX hatchback sportscar that he and another witness had earlier seen heading north on Bank Street turned onto Albert at Bank and appeared to lose control, Horeczy said.
It came speeding toward them.
Instinctively, Horeczy said, he backed up.
“It looked like it was happening in slow motion,” he said. “He basically never had control (of the car) the whole time he was on Albert.”
The Nissan jumped the curb not far from the intersection and struck the woman and man standing about two metres away from him.
Horeczy rushed to the unconscious woman, now lying on her stomach, who was breathing but bleeding profusely, he said.
But the car kept going, breaking through a barrier and crashing into an abutment.
The man suffered multi-system trauma and was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics after Ottawa police dragged him out from underneath the car, said paramedic operations Supt. Steve Leu.
The woman — whom Leu confirmed was the male victim's wife — sustained critical head injuries and multi-system trauma. Advanced care paramedics used “aggressive resuscitation measures” at the scene and en route to the trauma unit at The Ottawa Hospital's Civic campus.
The couple's friend was shaken up and "very emotionally disturbed," Leu said, but otherwise unhurt.
Horeczy said the driver of the car, who was unharmed, got out of the car and said: “I don’t know what happened. I can’t believe I lost control.”
“And a few people said, ‘You were driving like a bloody idiot. I know how to drive, and you were driving like a bloody idiot,’ ” Horeczy said. “He said, ‘I can’t understand how this happened. I can’t understand how this happened.’ ”
Horeczy said the driver appeared to be “a young kid” in his early 20s. He stayed at the scene until police arrived. Horeczy said the man appeared to be in shock.
About six witnesses, including Horeczy, were interviewed near the scene in an office building across the street Thursday night, he said.
Police would not provide any information about the incident, Thursday night.
They would not say whether any charges were pending.
An investigation is ongoing.
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