Car Wrapped Around Pole by Burger King

People enjoying Whopper Wednesday -- Whopper burgers for $1.99 -- at Burger King on Main St. at 1st Ave. were left stressed this afternoon after a car wrapped itself around a pole outside.

When the accident happened at about 6 p.m., a practical nurse having a burger and others went to see if they could help. The occupants of the car, a male and female, whom a male witness described as "East Indian", "just kids, about twenty five [years old]" were hurt. The woman reportedly had a broken neck and hip. "She was going in and out of consciousness", said the witness. The male in the car, said the witness, "had a bad back".

People who have seen the aftermath of a bad accident often have a need to talk about it in the hours afterward. That was the case with people walking down Main St. today toward the SkyTrain Station at Terminal & Main. One man whom I didn't know told me that the air bags had burst and that the pole had "impaled" the car, "like a can opener". He said if anybody had been in the back seat, they would have been killed.

Collision at Main St. & Georgia Viaduct

There was a two car collision at roughly 5 p.m. today on Main St. at Prior St., just across the street from the entrance to the Georgia Viaduct.  

There appeared to be no serious injuries.

Speeding Driver Loses Lottery

High speed appears to have been a factor in a two car accident beside the Shell station at Main & 2nd Ave. at about 11:00 p.m. Thursday night.

“They were definitely going fast, very fast”, said Gafar, the cashier inside the Shell station who was serving a customer when he heard the crash. It is unclear whether both vehicles were traveling at high speed though.

“They had to cut him out,” Gafar said, pointing to the open flap on the hood of the red car which lay on its side.

Gafar said he overheard one of the cops say, “We were looking for him.”

Gafar said there wasn't just one noise upon impact but a long sequence of loud noises. “I heard ‘Pow!, Pow!, Pow!, Pow!, Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow!” Gafar estimated that these noises had continued “for one or two minutes”. He asked his customer what had happened. The customer’s first response was, “Maybe the bus crashed.” But Gafar said they soon realized that the cars were right outside the window of the store.

“They were both unconscious,” said Gafar, who saw one victim removed from the red car on it’s side and another removed from a black car sitting right side up a few meters up the street.

Gafar asked one of the cops about the victim in the red car. “Is he dead?” The cop responded, “We’re working on him.”

Gafar said the accident could have been much worse. He pointed to the gas tanks outside the convenience store where there is a constant flow of people driving or walking through.

Gafar, an immigrant who speaks competent English, emphasized that it was his impression that there had been a "chase" going on when the accident occurred.





A male bystander said, "I think one of the wheels on the car is missing."

Vancouver Police Crash in Real Life during Filming of Halle Berry Movie

A cop in an unmarked vehicle was doing a U-turn at roughly 7:30 this evening in the middle of the 100 block Hastings St., and was struck by the car behind. That's what Marie, a young aboriginal woman with long dark hair walking along Hastings St., said.

"I saw the whole thing," Marie remarked. "It was the cop's fault."

There were lots of people on the sidewalk, some coming and going outside Insite, the supervised drug fixing site and apres fix cafe. One guy gazing at the crash site joked, "It's hard to know what's part of the movie." I didn't see filming close to the crash but police had Hastings St. blocked off from Main St. to Carroll. I don't know if it was blocked off at the time of the crash. When I walked up Hastings again a little after 10 p.m., filming with Halle Berry was going on at Columbia and Hastings using sixties era cars.

The photographer who passed the photos along to us reports that when she was taking photographs, a young, tall, white male cop in a yellow jacket strutted over to her and said, "Technically I could seize your camera as evidence." The photographer thought he was trying to tell her in a coded way to stop taking photographs. "I have a Charter right to take photographs", she responded politely. He repeated, "I just want you to know that technically I could seize your camera as evidence." Then she held up her camera to take a photo which would include him. See how fast he turned around.

Standing on the sidewalk later, she said to a friend, "I thought he was threatening me." Her friend responded, "He was."

Cyclist Hit by Courier Truck near Main & 3rd Ave.

Vancouver Police blocked off all traffic other than buses on Main St. between 2nd and 3rd Ave. for roughly 2 1/2 hours on Monday after a cyclist was hit. The cyclist, riding what a witness described as a "mountain bike", was hit by a white courier truck shortly before 3 p.m. A witness said the cyclist lay face down, not moving. He appeared to be in his thirties.

It was a sweltering hot afternoon as Vancouverites looked forward to the July 1st Canada Day holiday the next day.

The cyclist's shoe was about 10 feet from where he lay, leading to speculation that he had been thrown some distance upon impact. "His shoe was over there and his bike was over there," said a witness, cocking his head in different directions to indicate that these items lay some distance from the cyclist.

The witness didn't know whether the cyclist had been wearing a helmet. It could have been removed, he said, by a woman standing with the cyclist waiting for the ambulance to arrive. The witness thought the woman could have been the driver who hit him. "Ohhhhh," said a man in his seventies listening to the witness, "Woman driver, no survivor."

"Soup Nazi" Returns to Sally Ann Soup Truck

Last week, a BCTF member who teaches at the Downtown East Learning Center stopped at the nearby Sally Ann Soup Truck for the poor and had a bowl of soup. This raised questions about whether a working person should be using the free soup truck as a convenience. An article about this teacher standing in the charity soup line was reported on the Downtown Eastside Enquirer.

Last night she came back! On Tues. Oct. 2, the teacher once again lined up for a free bowl of soup. Since this unionized worker is taking soup meant for the poor and hungry on the Downtown Eastside, residents jokingly call her the "Soup Nazi".

Pedestrian Struck in School Crosswalk at 41st and Fraser

"Dad, you hit him." That's what a pedestrian who was struck yesterday afternoon in the crosswalk in the school zone near 41st and Fraser, recalls a teenager girl saying to her father as they gazed down at him. He was lying on the street in front of their car.

There were many witnesses to the accident which occurred around 3:30 or 4 p.m., just after school had gotten out, on Tues, Oct. 2.

The pedestrian says he had the right of way; his light was green.

The driver, with his teenager daughter in the car, had turned the corner into the crosswalk and run into the pedestrian. The pedestrian says, "I can still see the grate coming at me." Upon impact, the pedestrian flew up onto the hood of the car and his hand rammed into the windshield wiper area below the window, leaving him with a serious gash on the palm of his hand. His blood was on the windshield. The impact also injured his knee and left him banged up over other parts of his body. He is walking stiffly and limping badly. His friends have been coming to his aid.

[On the weekend after the accident, the pedestrian told his friend, Tom, that when he woke up one morning, he couldn't see for a few minutes. "Everything was fuzzy." He was lying on his bed looking toward the kitchen and even the fridge was a blur. That's a sign of a concussion, Tom told him.]

The pedestrian is a 53 yr. old caucasian man. The driver of the red car which struck him looked like an Indo-Canadian man in his 40's. The driver "didn't seem like a bad guy", the pedestrian recalls. He speculated that the guy had just picked up his teenager daughter at school and was preoccupied talking to her when he turned the corner into the crosswalk.

Four lanes of traffic were interrupted by the accident. Several people helped the pedestrian. One man pressed on the gash on his hand, which helped stem the bleeding. Another man rolled up a coat and put it under his head, keeping it off the pavement which was wet from an earlier rainfall. Two other people brought blankets to put over him.

The ambulance and firemen arrived at the scene and cut off the pedestrian's clothes as he lay on the street. Then he was whisked to Vancouver General Hospital. There he was given numerous x-rays and scans. They were concerned that he might have broken his neck, but he hadn't. He was in the hospital for about 6 hours. He has no complaints about the treatment he got at VGH Emergency. The supervising physician, Dr. Rubacher, seemed really "on top of things".

Two police officers, one being Constable Peter Campbell, visited the pedestrian at the hospital. They pointed out that he had an umbrella and wanted to know if he'd had it open, if it had been raining. He said there was moisture in the air but it had not been raining at the time so his umbrella had been closed.The pedestrian told the cops that if the driver had killed him, it would have at least been a convenient spot. Why?, one cop asked. "It was next to the cemetery."

Other school-related news:
International Boycott of Vancouver High School Diplomas Concealed By School Board
Vancouver Teachers Demand Recycling in Schools