Winnipeg police say a woman has died and several other people have been injured in a collision involving a vehicle that was fleeing police.
The crash happened at about 1:30 p.m. Saturday in the area of Salter Street and Boyd Avenue, police said in a statement.
According to police, officers tried to pull over a vehicle for a traffic stop but the driver “took off at a high rate of speed.”
Seconds later, the vehicle hit another car in the nearby intersection of Andrews Street and Boyd Avenue.
Four people in the vehicle that was struck — including an infant and a child — were sent to hospital. A woman who was in that vehicle has died from her injuries, police said.
Two people from the vehicle that had fled police were also transported to hospital.
The Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba, which investigates serious incidents involving police, has been called to investigate.
In a press conference Saturday evening, Winnipeg Police Const. Rob Carver said that almost everyone in the collision was in either serious or critical condition.
“Incredibly tragic, we’ve got an infant in the vehicle, a child in the vehicle, a woman who was killed in this crash, tragic all around,” said Carver, who also stressed that the incident was not a result of a police pursuit.
Renato Navarro, who lives near the intersection of Boyd Avenue and Andrews Street, witnessed the collision while working in his yard Saturday afternoon.
“We (were) scared, I’m thinking about what (if) this thing happened to my family… It’s very sad and we’re praying that they’ll be OK,” Navarro said of the victims.
Navarro said his children and children from the neighbourhood often play in the street.
“It’s a Saturday, lots of kids are playing there in that road — thank God there’s no kids at that time,” he said.
“We pulled up, we attempted to have this vehicle spoken to, and the vehicle fled. We did not pursue it.”
For the two people in the fleeing vehicle, Carver said he does not have an idea on their injuries, but that they will at some point be taken into custody “when their medical condition allows for that.”
“In the space of less than half a minute … what started out as a routine incident ended up with multiple people in the hospital and a woman killed, and these people were not connected at all.”
— With files from Global News’ David Lao and Erik Pindera
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