Montreal’s Hasidic Jewish community is mourning the loss of an 11-year-old boy after he was hit and pinned under a truck in the city’s Plateau-Mont-Royal borough.
Mayer Feig, a leader in the tight-knit community, was among those who attended the funeral service Tuesday morning. He said the boy was on his way to Dollarama to buy a lunch box for school when he was killed.
“It’s a tragedy beyond belief,” Feig said.
Montreal police were called to the collision around 7:30 p.m. Monday at the corner of Parc and Bernard avenues in the Mile End neighbourhood.
The driver was heading southbound on Parc Avenue, an artery that cuts through the area, when he turned right on Bernard and the child was caught underneath the truck, according to police.
“He was trapped underneath the truck, so then the child was transported to hospital while in critical condition and unfortunately the child died of his injuries,” police said.
Paramedics were taking care of the boy when police officers arrived at the rain-drenched scene. Feig works as a volunteer paramedic in the area and had to inform the victim’s parents.
“I know the family. Unfortunately, I was the one who had to go notify them,” Feig said. “It was very, very, very tough for me to do.”
Feig didn’t personally know the victim, but he says the family is well established in the community. His parents and siblings, of which there at least eight, are “all grief stricken beyond belief.”
Police say the truck driver, a 28-year-old man, was not injured in the collision. No arrests have been made as of Tuesday, but the investigation is ongoing.
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Investigators also met with witnesses and they were looking for footage from surveillance cameras in the area. A safety perimeter at the scene was lifted.
Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante offered her condolences to the victim’s family, saying they are going through a “terrible ordeal.”
“Please drive carefully. Protecting the most vulnerable on the road is everyone’s business,” Plante wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Calls grow to make intersection safer
The boy’s death has left Mile End residents like Ainsley Daumler shaken. She was witness to a near-crash just days before.
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“Last week a kid was almost hit at the same intersection because a car ran a red light,” Daumler said.
In the hours since, calls have grown to make the busy intersection safer. Feig said the visibility in the area in general is “very bad” since street lights were replaced in recent years.
Marie-Soleil Cloutier, director of the Pedestrian and Urban Space Laboratory at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), told Global News that fall takes a “toll on pedestrians.”
“I feel that we have to improve a whole bunch of environment of road environments, of crossings, of even maybe lighting of our streets and of our intersections,” she said. “But I feel we also have to be aware of the fact that we share streets.”
While more traffic-calming measures would help, Cloutier urged motorists to be aware of their surroundings — especially in busy areas where there are many pedestrians and cyclists alongside cars.
“I would urge all drivers and those in the city to be extra careful,” she said. “You know, you have a responsibility when you’re behind a wheel.”
Marianne Giguère, a city councillor in the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough and the executive committee member for active mobility, said “a lot can be done” to make Parc Avenue safer.
“We’ve been working on projects to improve the safety,” she said.
In the meantime, Giguère says if the investigation finds lighting played a role in the collision that is something that could be improved. There are also more accidents after the time change for Daylight Saving Time, she said, adding that it was also raining heavily when the boy was struck.
“But we need to work on every intersection because it has to be more systematic,” she said, referring to both the thoroughfares of Parc and Mont-Royal avenues.
Giguère says a lot can be done in general across to make roads safer across Montreal, but it’s a “long process, because the city has been built around car fluidity.”
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