WATCH ABOVE: Four people were killed and 15 others injured in a collision near Jasper Friday night. Jessica Kent has the details.
CALGARY – The RCMP have identified the four people killed in a five-vehicle pileup on Highway 16, near the Alberta-British Columbia border, Friday night.
Police say they are:
- An 18-year-old man from Carvel, AB
- A 28-year-old man from Spruce Grove, AB
- A 22-year-old woman from Peace River, AB
- A 21-year-old man from Edmonton
The accident sent more than a dozen others to hospital.
Emergency crews were called around 10:45 p.m. Friday to the Yellowhead Highway, 16 kilometres west of Jasper.
Mounties said a pick-up truck heading east collided with another pick-up and three other vehicles headed in the opposite direction.
The driver of the eastbound pickup truck was killed, along with two men and a woman in the westbound truck.
Fifteen other people were taken to hospital.
Peter Taylor was driving home to Edmonton from Vancouver when he came upon a long line of stopped traffic in the area shortly after midnight. Taylor said it was raining heavily in the area Friday night and visibility was low.
Parks officials walked up and down the lines of traffic informing people the road would be closed for several hours, Taylor said.
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“Her wording was, in her 16 years that was the most horrific thing she’d ever seen,” he said.
Taylor waited in the line for about eight hours before the highway was reopened Saturday morning.
“That was horrific,” he said of what was left of the collision scene around 8 a.m. “Two pick-up trucks were completely smashed in… What was also horrifying was seeing the minivan in the same condition.
“Waiting in traffic you’re insulated from seeing the true horror. It’s the same feeling, I guess, as when I saw the day after tornado, seeing the carnage throughout Edmonton,” he said. “You look at it in kind of disbelief.”
Police have not determined whether alcohol, excessive speed or weather were factors in the crash.
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