Search

Recent Post

Recent Comments

Popular

Kids miss mom and dad

January 6th, 2006 by admin

Source: The Abbotsford Times
By Christina Toth

Two young Abbotsford boys are grieving after their parents and grandparents were killed in a car crash at the southern approach to the Pattullo Bridge late Monday afternoon.

The tragedy had not yet sunk in for the orphaned boys, Pavi, 10, and Sunny, 12, a relative told The Province newspaper Wednesday.

“They’re so young, they don’t understand. They keep asking for mom and dad. They are being looked after by family,” said Ranjit Gill, a senior vice-president at the Ross Street Sikh Temple in Vancouver.

Swarnjeet Kaur Aulakh, 32, her husband Gurtej Singh Aulakh, 41, whom police say was driving, Punjab Kaur Aulakh, 79, and her husband Hakam Singh Aulakh, 81, died after their northbound Chevrolet Cavalier skidded into the path of a southbound car on King George Highway in Surrey.

About 50 mourners were gathered at the younger couple’s house Wednesday, trying to make sense of a tragedy that has rocked the Fraser Valley’s Indo-Canadian community.

“We miss them,” said family spokesman Jarnail Singh Gill outside the family’s home. “They were friends for a long time and we have some family relations.

“They will be sadly missed.”

Family members are now preparing for a funeral, possibly for Sunday, which will allow family members to travel back from the Punjab in India.

Ranjit Gill said Gurtej was a farm worker in the Abbotsford area.

Police say the younger couple and the elderly woman succumbed at the scene, while the older man died of his injuries in the hospital.

Surrey RCMP say the accident happened at 4:40 p.m. on Monday, when the 1997 four-door Cavalier was northbound in the fast lane on the bridge and passing other traffic. The Cavalier lost control and skidded sideways into southbound traffic, where it was T-boned by an oncoming 2000 Pontiac Grand Am, causing both cars to spin.

The crash caused the busy commuter bridge to be closed for several hours.

The 29-year-old Surrey woman who was driving the Grand Am, her husband, 34, their three-year-old daughter and year-old son were all treated for scrapes, bruises and soft-tissue injuries in hospital and released.

The RCMP say both wet weather conditions and speed appear to be factors in the crash and they added that at least two of the victims who died appeared to not be wearing their seatbelts.

Surrey RCMP traffic Sgt. Phil Hasenpflug said Tuesday analysts will download the Cavalier’s black box to reveal the last several seconds of the car’s history before the deadly collision.

“The analysts, it’ll take them a couple of weeks before they finish doing their work,” he said.

Hasenpflug noted that most GM vehicles produced over the past five years have black boxes that can tell investigators if seatbelts were worn and how fast the car was going before the crash.

Hasenpflug said even though the Pattullo Bridge approach is well-lit and “plenty wide,” police are kept busy by motorists who drive “horrendously over” the speed limit.

“Even if they’d just drive close to the speed limit we wouldn’t have these problems down there,” he said.

“We’re writing tickets up there on a continual basis for people coming on and off the bridge deck at over 100 kilometres an hour, and it’s a 50 zone now.”

The fatalities have renewed calls to install a median on the bridge to make it safer.

- With files from the Surrey Now, the Vancouver Sun and the Province

published on 01/06/2006

Posted by admin in archive |
Print This Article or leave a response or trackback