‘I haven’t slept since’: witness to pedestrian fatality

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This article was published 29/09/2023 (757 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A witness to a hit-and-run collision that killed a pedestrian Tuesday night in St. Vital is emotionally shaken and struggling to process what she saw.

A woman in her 40s was crossing Fermor Avenue at St. Mary’s Road when she was hit by an eastbound car, allegedly piloted by an impaired driver, that went through a red light at about 8:30 p.m.

“I haven’t slept since,” Sheena Davies told the Free Press on Thursday. “I feel for her family beyond anything. Even (the suspect’s) family. This is totally senseless.”

Davies was returning home with her son when she heard a loud noise while backing her vehicle into her driveway.

When she looked toward the intersection, she saw the woman on the ground on Fermor and the back end of a red car, which appeared to be leaving at “super-high speed,” Davies said.

“I gasped,” Davies said, noting she doesn’t recall hearing any braking before or after the sound of the collision. “The scariest part of all of this is, what I remember was there was no sound of screeching tires.”

Police said a red Audi A4 was travelling at high speed when it entered the intersection, narrowly missed other vehicles and struck the woman.

She was crossing from the south side of Fermor on the east side of the intersection.

After the driver fled, the car and a suspect were found less than two hours later, about four kilometres away on the 1000 block of Beaverhill Boulevard in Southdale, according to police.

Immediately after the collision, Davies called 911 and approached the scene. The injured woman was on Fermor close to St. David Road, just east of St. Mary’s.

A few boys who were playing at the corner of Fermor and St. David told Davies the car was a red Audi, and it had a damaged windshield, she said.

Davies relayed the information to a 911 call-taker.

She said a westbound driver had already stopped and climbed over the concrete median to check on the victim. “(The driver) looked up at me and she shook her head.”

As a crowd began to gather, the woman covered the victim’s body with a blanket. Another driver stopped and positioned his vehicle to protect the victim from other vehicles.

She was pronounced dead at the scene by first responders.

Davies said she hugged the drivers who stopped to help, before they all left the scene.

She was disgusted by people who took out their mobile phones and appeared to take photos or record videos, while the victim lay on the road.

Davies said she briefly took a boy’s cellphone away and scolded him. “I started yelling at him, saying that could be somebody’s mother, how would you feel?”

Davies, who has lived in the area for 16 years, said she regularly notices vehicles driving too fast on roads or in back lanes. “Around here, they don’t ever slow down.”

For vehicles on Fermor, the speed limit through the intersection is 60 km/h.

Kelvin Mark Lavallee, 25, of Winnipeg, was charged with impaired driving causing death, dangerous driving causing death, failing to stop at the scene, being impaired within two hours of driving, and driving without a licence.

He was on supervised probation at the time of the collision, court records show.

Karen Reimer was heartbroken for the victim’s family when she learned of Tuesday’s collision. Her daughter, Jordyn, 24, was killed by a drunk driver speeding at Bond Street and Kildare Avenue West in May 2022.

That driver and his passengers fled the scene, too.

“It just opens up those wounds, and the rawness of how it’s so unjust and so unfair,” said Reimer. “It breaks my heart to think about how many more families are going to go through the catastrophic grieving that we’re going through.”

Feeling frustrated and let down by the justice system, the Reimer family is campaigning for changes to laws and tougher consequences for people convicted of killing or seriously injuring someone while driving impaired.

Sentences often do not reflect the gravity of the crimes, said Reimer, who feels accused people have more rights than victims or the families of victims within the system.

She wants passengers to be prosecuted if they, too, flee the scene of collisions.

A year after Jordyn Reimer was killed, Tyler Scott Goodman, 29, pleaded to impaired driving causing death and failing to remain at the scene.

His mother, Laurie Lynn Goodman, 57, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice for lying to police.

They have yet to be sentenced.

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @chriskitching