A tour bus driver is dead after being struck by her vehicle in the parking lot of the Columbia Icefield Discovery Centre on Thursday.
RCMP said the driver, a 52-year-old woman believed to be from Alberta, was outside the bus when she was hit.
“She had got out of the bus, the bus had nobody in the driver’s seat and it slid into her in the parking lot,” RCMP spokesperson Cpl. Laurel Scott said.
“It also hit four other vehicles and then it came to a stop.”
Officers were called to the parking lot at 1:18 p.m. after receiving 911 calls there had been a collision.
STARS Air Ambulance also responded to the parking lot, but wasn’t used as the woman died at the scene, RCMP said.
Scott told Global News investigators couldn’t say whether the collision was due to road conditions in the parking lot or a mechanical issue.
“My understanding is that the conditions varied throughout that day. I know that the parking lot, at some times through the day, was ice-covered,” she said.
A witness on the scene told Global News the parking lot was icy and slippery at the time of the crash.
Scott said she couldn’t speak to why the driver was out of the bus or how it ended up in motion in the lot.
“The bottom line is this is a very tragic event that happened and it’s extremely unfortunate,” she said. “Something like this doesn’t happen very often and so we are going to thoroughly investigate it.”