WINNIPEG – A 72-year-old woman hit and killed by a Winnipeg Transit bus Tuesday morning was struck while crossing Keewatin Street at a green light, police now say.
The woman had stepped off the curb at about 9 a.m. and was starting across in the pedestrian corridor when a bus turning right off Burrows Avenue, which also had a green light, struck her, police said. It knocked her under its wheels, and she died at the scene.
Her friend, Verna Robinson, told Global News the woman was on the way to a doctor’s appointment.
“She was just full of life and she had so much more,” said Robinson. “It is so sad it got taken away from her.”
She said her friend of nearly 40 years was a mother and grandmother.
“She is a careful person,” Robinson said. “There are times where we are walking somewhere and she always tries to back me up saying stay on the sidewalk.”
The woman had the right of way, police said early Wednesday afternoon. They are still investigating whether the bus driver was unable to see her or if there were any other factors at play in the collision.
“For reasons we are still trying to determined she was struck, fell to the ground and made her way under the bus,” said Const. Jason Michalyshen, with the Winnipeg Police Service.
READ MORE: Pedestrian killed by Winnipeg Transit bus at Burrows and Keewatin
Flowers now mark the spot where the woman was killed. Lorena Dilim didn’t know her, but has friends who were on the bus that hit her.
“They were saying they’re probably going to get nightmares about it,” said Dilim, who felt compelled to put flowers at the street corner. “They weren’t really expecting it because they were going to school and someone had to die that way.”
Dilim says her friends on the bus panicked when they found out what happened. They also told her the bus driver was unaware he hit the woman.
“The bus driver wasn’t expecting it, because he thought they were potholes, and he didn’t know that was an old lady who he was running over,” Dilim told Global News.
The investigation continues and police ask anyone with more information about the collision to call them at 204-986-6271.
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