“I ask you to intervene before there is an accident. ” ” It’s just a matter of time. “I’m writing to you again. Over the past three years, neighborhood residents have repeatedly sounded the alarm about the danger of Bélair Street. However, on June 22, Dilan Caya, 22, was fatally struck there by the driver of a heavy truck. Inconsolable ever since, his father watches night and day in his memory, where Dilan lost his life.
“She passed away. And with it, a part of me, ”breathes Cuma Caya, the victim’s father. “I’ve been here 22 days,” he says, pointing to the makeshift memorial for his daughter. The bereaved man intends to go to the corner of 22e Avenue and rue Bélair as long as his questions remain unanswered.
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
Dilan Caya, 22, was hit by the driver of a heavy truck as she crossed the 22e Avenue, at the corner of rue Bélair.
Mr. Caya cannot explain how his daughter could have been mowed down in this way. She took a pedestrian crossing – which forces motorists to stop. However, no charges have yet been brought against the 54-year-old man who was driving the truck involved, he laments.
Sofiane Mezghiche has discussed many times with Mr. Caya over the past few weeks. “He is there day and night,” explains the man who lives in the apartment building opposite where the accident occurred. “The dad, he can’t mourn,” saddens Mr. Mezghiche, who especially deplores the death of Dilan, a young medical student, which according to him could have been avoided.
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
Sofiane Mezghiche
“I expected it to happen,” he says. He saw the danger the intersection posed months ago. He himself was almost hit: “We are afraid,” says Mr. Mezghiche.
A foreseeable accident
As early as 2020, neighborhood residents raised concerns about the dangerousness of Bélair Street. “Every day without exception, I fear for my safety and that of my children,” wrote Maxime Thibault in an email to borough councilor Sylvain Ouellet dated November 10, 2020.
Her 4-year-old daughter attends the Bélair educational daycare, located at the corner of 22e Avenue, where Dilan Caya was mowed down.
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
The Bélair educational daycare. In the background, on the right, we can see the improvised memorial for Dilan Caya.
“Rue Bélair serves as an alternative route to get around the works [du SRB Pie-IX] “, writes Mr. Thibault in this email where he also reports a “dense” and “high-speed” traffic.
He believes that the width of the street encourages drivers to take risks, making traffic “chaotic”. In addition, only three permanent mandatory stop signs punctuate this one-kilometre-long street that connects Pie-IX boulevards to the east and Saint-Michel boulevards to the west.
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
Many motorists take rue Bélair to bypass the work related to the SRB Pie-IX.
A few months later, in March 2021, Mr. Thibault returns to the charge. “Motorists are looking for shortcuts by going through Bélair Street at full speed. What’s more, the presence of an elementary school and daycare centers nearby accentuates, according to Mr. Thibault, the danger posed by the artery.
In June 2021, following new work, this time on rue Bélanger, to the south: “The horns, emergency braking with squealing tires, sudden accelerations out of frustration and zigzags to overtake at full speed are countless. »
More recently, last March: “It seems incomprehensible to me that the borough’s strategy is always to rely on more or less defined projects, always “to come” in “a few years”. »
Mr. Thibault then vilifies the “magical thought that an accident will not happen in the meantime”. A little over three months later, Dilan Caya lost his life.
traffic studies
Borough councilor Sylvain Ouellet said he was “devastated” when he learned of the death of a pedestrian in his district of François-Perrault, especially since a vast traffic calming project was planned for autumn.
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
As early as 2020, neighborhood residents raised concerns about the dangerousness of Bélair Street.
Traffic studies were conducted in 2022 to assess the relevance of adding mandatory stop signs on rue Bélair, at the corner of 12e and the 18e Avenue, we learn in an email sent by Mr. Ouellet to Mr. Thibault. The firm hired externally had however deemed that such a measure was not necessary, explains the advisor, a member of Projet Montréal. However, Mr. Ouellet is of the opinion that the Volume V – Road signswhich presents all the standards of the Ministère des Transports et de la Mobilité durable, may not be suitable for the dense neighborhoods of Montreal.
We are not fighting against engineers as such. But maybe a little against the Volume V.
Sylvain Ouellet, borough councilor for the François-Perrault district
Since the death of Dilan Caya, traffic calming measures have been put in place on Bélair Street, and the Montreal Police Department has issued more than a hundred statements of offense to truck drivers. , said Commander Claude Lizotte, from neighborhood station 30, in Saint-Michel. In addition, the construction of the SRB Pie-IX must be completed in the fall of 2023.
But for Cuma Caya, none of this will bring her daughter back, he articulates. The grieving father has been watching over the grain for 22 days, but he says he is ready to do so for another 22 years. When asked what he wants, it is Turkish, his mother tongue, which comes back at a gallop: Hak hukuk adelet, he replies. Justice and equity.