This is what makes you dizzy, even if you tell yourself that one death is one death too many. Sure. But the death of a child is always an extra layer of horror, an extra layer of horror, when fate strikes.
She was 7 years old.
It had therefore run all day: the little girl caught by a motorist at the corner of Parthenais and Rouen, Tuesday morning, was 7 years old.
The heart sinks, you think of the children you know. I thought of mine: he was 7 years old when I started letting him go to the park alone, like a grown-up. He only had one intersection to cross.
Nothing is known of the circumstances of the accident. We just know that the little one was going to school. That passers-by alerted the CLSC Parthenais, located at the same intersection. That three nurses and a doctor came running, that they undertook resuscitation maneuvers.
We also know that the little one was with her sister and brother.
All day, like everyone else, I’ve been keeping tabs on this news, hoping to read the magic words in a police statement, like the child is out of danger. Secretly, I even said a prayer, and I don’t even believe in God, who knows.
In the afternoon, Érick Ouellet wrote to me. Érick writes to me often, whether to comment on this column or the show radio. He lives in the Ville-Marie district. In the spring, Érick wrote to the police, to PDQ 22 to be precise, to tell them that things are going fast in the area. To tell him that he had seen in 2021 a pedestrian get hit by a motorist… on Rouen, precisely.
I quote his email to the police: “With the number of children passing through and the parents, it is a miracle that no one was killed. »
Well, the miracle ended Tuesday, around 8 a.m. Someone has been killed, and that “someone” is a 7-year-old girl. We found out a little before 6 p.m. And I dropped a big church word that starts with “c” and rhymes with “smooth”.
Of course, accidents do happen. But just to say that is to have accepted that the layout of our streets, our neighborhoods and our cities is not optimal.
A citizen, Philippe Bouchard, testified to The Press having asked the City to install sidewalk projections at the Parthenais-de Rouen intersection, without success.
Projections of what? Sidewalk projections: the sidewalk is widened at intersections, forming a funnel. It’s boring for the motorist in a hurry, but it’s a kind of pedestrian saver, because it limits overtaking at intersections: the narrower the lane, the more motorists tend to slow down.
And just last week, Piétons Québec made a public outing to highlight what? To highlight a worrying increase in pedestrian deaths in recent weeks. To hammer home the message of the importance of planning roads, neighborhoods, cities…
Érick Ouellet told me what Philippe Bouchard said to The Press : the closure of part of the Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine tunnel has created a lot of additional traffic in the area, because of the nearby Jacques-Cartier bridge. Even before Tuesday’s accident, there was fear in this sector of Ville-Marie of motorists from the South Shore in a hurry who want to take shortcuts in the neighborhood.
I tell you that and the 40-year-old man who gave himself up to the police a few hours after the tragedy, where does he live? On the South Shore.
Chance ?
We’ll see.
All day, like everyone else, I kept an eye on this news hoping to read that the little one was out of danger. At 6 p.m., we knew she was dead.
Then, in the evening, as if that were not enough, a little snow of additional ignominy landed on this already rather horrible news item, thank you: the little girl was a Ukrainian refugee.
Imagine… You are fleeing Ukraine, which has been set on fire and bloodied by Russia, you are looking for a safe country in which to shelter your family. You put your finger on the world map: we’re going to Canada, honey?
Go, we’re going to Canada, we’re going to Quebec.
You arrive in Montreal, you rebuild your life. You say to yourself: we’ll be fine here, the little ones are safe, they won’t be massacred by one of Putin’s soldiers…
Worse your daughter is killed corner Parthenais-de Rouen by a driver.
Damn it’s absurd, life.
I knew very well that praying does nothing.