A day after a horrific crash near the Alberta-Saskatchewan border killed three women and sent a fourth to hospital, a spokesperson for Edmonton’s Liberian community has identified them and calls the loss “devastating.”
“We’ve had a few deaths in our community and we’re a strong community — we always come together and show support for each other, but this one was strange,” Emmanuel Savice, communications director of the United Liberian Association, told Global News on Saturday. “It’s tough on everybody. It’s a catastrophe.”
Savice said the three women who died in the crash were 53-year-old Jeannette Wright, 37-year-old Eva Fatu Tumbay and 35-year old Glorious (Gloria) Blamo, the wife of a pastor who has a ministry in northeast Edmonton with a large Liberian congregation. Janet (Mamie) Gaye, 32, was also with the women killed in the crash. She was airlifted to hospital but her condition is unknown.
“It leaves a lot of questions because, you know, you have a family devoted to God, praying every day and you’ve got a pastor’s wife that everybody goes to for help,” Savice said of Blamo’s husband.
“This time, he needs our help.”
At around 3 a.m. on Friday, the RCMP said officers were called to a crash on Highway 16, about five kilometres east of Lloydminster after a flat-deck truck collided with a minivan in an eastbound lane. The four women were in the minivan and three were pronounced dead at the scene.
READ MORE: Stolen truck crashes into minivan on Highway 16, leaving 3 women dead
Police said the truck was reported stolen in the Lloydminster area sometime before the crash and the person(s) who were in it fled the crash scene before police arrived. A 26-year-old man was later arrested but police have not provided further details other than to say before the crash, Mounties were “investigating a complaint involving multiple stolen vehicles, including the truck that was later involved in the collision.”
A Facebook post about the incident has since gained significant attention on the social media platform. The poster, whose user account is called Curtis Byford, says late Thursday night, three trucks pulled up to his house before all the occupants got into one of the trucks and left.
“Panic does not even start to explain the feeling,” the poster writes as he describes worrying about what the trucks were doing there and how to protect his children. He says he called the RCMP and alleges they followed the truck and that an officer later told him they were told to “stand down.” Byford wrote he believes the truck was the vehicle involved in the deadly crash. The post went up on Facebook on Friday afternoon and by Saturday afternoon, it had been shared more than 6,000 times.
On Saturday afternoon, Maidstone RCMP provided more details on the crash that corroborated Byford’s account.
“At approximately 2:30 a.m., members from the Maidstone detachment were investigating three suspicious vehicles when they located two of them near the junction of Highway 303 and Highway 16,” police said in a news release. “The third suspicious vehicle – the flat-deck truck – was then observed driving in the vicinity.
“Members activated their emergency equipment and attempted a traffic stop. The suspect vehicle fled. Members initiated a pursuit and notified the monitoring supervisor. Upon assessment, the supervisor terminated the pursuit.”
“The pursuit was terminated in accordance with the RCMP’s Emergency Vehicle Operation policy,” Assistant Commissioner Curtis Zablocki said. “Given that pursuits pose a serious risk to the public, the RCMP developed national policy that outlines the requirements for initiating a pursuit, the ongoing monitoring and assessing, and the decision to continue or terminate a pursuit.”
Police said the crash happened about 30 minutes “after the pursuit was terminated.”
“No police vehicles were in the vicinity at the time of the collision,” the RCMP said. “On behalf of Saskatchewan RCMP, Assistant Commissioner Zablocki offers condolences and deepest sympathies to the families impacted by this tragedy.”
Savice told Global News the women were on their way to Minnesota, which he says has a significant Liberian population, to see friends and family.
“They were on one of their usual trips,” he said, adding they had gone to the state several times before. “It’s devastating, that’s what it is.”
Savice said all of the victims of the crash were mothers.
“Can you imagine?” he said. “They’re going to be without their mothers for the rest of their lives.”
Francis Hinnah, the president of the Federation of Liberian Associations in Canada, based out of London, Ont., has launched a GoFundMe account to raise money for the families of the women who died and for the woman in hospital.
–With files from Kim Smith