Benefit concert to be held for Kelowna musician, actor injured in car crash

Okanagan songbird Anna Jacyszyn is grounded after a horrific car crash.

On Jan. 27, the well-known musician and actor was T-boned by a car on the corner of Belgo Road and Springfield Road in Kelowna, B. C. Her car rolled through a fence, eventually landing upside down.

“I just closed my eyes and started praying until I got to the hospital,” Jacyszyn said.

Kelowna RCMP say in a statement that the driver of the vehicle that struck Jacyszyn was also taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Jacyszyn is now at home healing after a month-long stay in the hospital to heal a fractured hip, sternum and arm. Her injuries will keep her from working for at least six months.

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“We were thinking, are we going to remortgage the house?” Jacyszyn said.

The musician and actor’s peers are some of the top talent in the Okanagan Valley and are hoping to change her tune with a benefit concert that will boost their online fundraiser to help the couple get through the next months financially.

“That total peace that I can heal without that constant stress of, ‘Holy, what am I going to do? How are we going to do this?'” Jacyszyn said.

“That gives me peace. Thank you so much for your donations because it’s exactly the peace that we need.”

Co-organizer of the fundraiser Brad Krauza says he used to live where Jacyszyn crashed and says her crash wasn’t a rare event. He says he lived at the house for just over four years and assisted with at least 10 crashes.

“We would be cooking dinner and wham! There would be an accident, many of them over the years,” Krauza said.

“I have my Level 3 first aid so out the door we would go. It is such a bad intersection.”

Jacyszyn is calling for the City of Kelowna to build a traffic circle to prevent a crash like this from happening again.  The city says in a statement that it is looking into constructing one but cannot confirm when it would be built.

In the meantime, some of the valley’s brightest stars will be raising their voices for Jacyszyn at Crown and Thieves on Thursday.