Days after a signal worker was fatally mowed down last week, another similar incident occurred in Montreal, this time caught on video, forcing police to launch a new investigation.
• Read also: Hit and run in Montreal: the traffic signalman succumbs to his injuries
“There will always be some. But to enter a human, you really don’t have to have a conscience. A human life cannot be replaced, ”drops a 24-year-old signaling foreman, who was also the victim of a hit and run.
While the police continue their investigative work, he asked to conceal his identity.
Recall that Maxime Béland, a 39-year-old father, lost his life earlier this week after being hit by a motorist on the evening of July 12, on an asphalting work site in Pointe-aux-Trembles.
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Two days later, last Friday evening, the young foreman had just closed the accesses to Crémazie Boulevard East and West for paving work.
Photo taken from a Facebook video, Pierre Luc Morin
By the sidewalk
Shortly before 9 p.m., an orange Hyundai car allegedly bypassed traffic signs that blocked access to the roadway by encroaching on the sidewalk, he said.
“He passed, well in slow motion, next to our closing signs, he says. I went to see him to tell him that he was going to have to turn around, that it would not be possible.
After being explained that there were workers further on the site, the driver, accompanied by a young woman, allegedly disputed that he had to take this path because of his GPS, which told him to continue in this direction.
“My colleague came to tell him that it wouldn’t work, and that he had passed on the sidewalk. I took out my cell phone, telling myself that he was going to understand that he was not cooperative, ”he said.
The scene was captured on a video that has since circulated widely on social networks.
We hear the driver garlanding the worker near his window and saying that he “doesn’t attack anyone”.
He then engages the reverse gear, backs up a few feet, then presses the accelerator, mowing down the cameraman in the legs.
“He backed up, he rushed, and ran into me,” he says.
The video then shows that the victim came into contact with the hood of the car. The young worker says he suffered knee injuries.
Photo taken from a Facebook video, Pierre Luc Morin
“It has to stop”
The driver meanwhile fled on the blocked road, before avoiding the traffic signs at the exit of the construction site.
“I followed him, then, to have his plate number. It must have hit 80-100 km/h on the construction site”, recalls the man who has accumulated five years in the field of signaling.
“[Des comportements comme ça], we see it everywhere. It has to stop, at some point,” he laments.
He does not even say he is surprised that this event occurred so soon after the incident that cost Mr. Béland his life.
“That does not surprise me. The more the years go by, the worse it gets. That does not make any sense.”
According to what the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) told him, the driver who hit him, a 61-year-old man, could face charges of assault with a weapon with a motor vehicle and hit and run.
The sexagenarian was found by the SPVM, which is currently investigating.