So Tragic

[80s_Fan]

Car kills toddler on lawn
Vehicles plow into yard. Girl was playing at Île Perrot daycare

A 3-year-old girl's white running shoes lent a poignant note to the grim scene outside an Île Perrot home yesterday after two cars plowed into the lawn, one of them killing the child as she played.

The two male drivers, 17 and 18, were arrested at the scene, just west of Montreal Island. The two, who are friends, were still being questioned last night, the Sûreté du Québec said.

Neither driver was injured.


A Sûreté du Québec investigator examines the Île Perrot property where a 3-year-old girl was killed yesterday. Two male drivers, 17 and 18, were arrested.

One car clipped the other as it tried to pass at a stop sign on des Érables St. near Giffard St. about 1:15 p.m., SQ Constable Ronald

McInnis said. The cars then spun across the street. One struck and killed the girl, who was on the lawn at a private daycare that is run in a house on Giffard.

It was too early last night to say whether the drivers were drag racing or the girl's death was the result of a freak accident, McInnis said.

But residents said racing cars are a big problem in the area.

Jaqueline Thompson, who lives across the street from where the accident took place, said that immediately after the cars crashed through a fence and a hedge on the property, she saw the daycare operator outside screaming.

"She was screaming: 'Ma fille! ma fille!' " about the girl, who was not her daughter.

About an hour later, the girl's mother came running down the street, screaming for her daughter, Thompson said.

Île Perrot Mayor Marc Roy came to scene and said the SQ does not do enough to prevent speeding motorists.

"I came to survey the wreckage - again," Roy said, adding his city has installed speed bumps in the area but some drivers just roar over them.

"There's a lot of speeding around here," Roy said.

"The SQ does next to nothing" about it, he added as he tried unsuccessfully to hold back tears.

Thompson said she was on her front lawn putting up Halloween decorations when she saw a black Pontiac Sunfire "drive at a normal speed to the stop sign. He made his stop," she said.

Then, a grey Volkswagen Golf came roaring from behind on the two-way street, she said. "That car came way too fast. It passed the (first) car on the left just as the black car started to turn left" before both vehicles spun out of control, she said.

The girl was playing in the yard near an elaborate landscape of Halloween decorations that included tombstones and ghosts.

The girl was pinned under the Volkswagen. Firefighters lifted the vehicle to retrieve her but were not able to revive her, neighbour Benoît Gauthier said.

The woman who runs the Giffard daycare was identified as Jacynthe Viens.

Brenda-Lee Leacock, who runs another private daycare nearby on des Érables, said: "Normally on Halloween she and her husband would be sitting outside giving candy to the kids.

"She loves kids."

Viens has run a daycare in her home for more than 20 years.

She was treated for shock after the accident, the Sûreté du Québec said.

Leacock said Viens did not return home and went instead to her sister's residence.

Parents and children were trick-or-treating at homes near the accident shortly after the damaged vehicles were removed and police left.

But just after 7 p.m., in a show of good neighbourliness, about half a dozen residents removed all the Halloween decorations from the Viens property.

Anne-Marie Hayes, a neighbour and a friend of Viens, said the group did it "so the decorations won't be sitting there as a reminder."


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People like this really get to me; why do they have to do such things like this? If they want to race, and act like psychotic humans; they should do it in an area that's secluded completely; that way nobody gets hurt. If they have such a huge problem with people racing; then the police should always be in that particular area to stop them.

[catlover79]

[Mikado]

The Guy in the Golf is totally at fault here...that's terrible!

[Hollow]

at a ****ing daycare...
that almost made me cry

[Nighthawk76]

[AB]

Thats so sad.

[Chocoholic]

If they were driving recklessly, then they need to be charged with murder and put away for LIFE!!!

[freshprinceofLA]

How terrible!
My prayers are with the toddler killed and her family!

AS for those boneheads who were driving they deserve to be pinned to the front of a truck and rammed into a wall

[Family Ties Forever!]

That's sad.