An adult and a child were rushed to hospital with serious injuries Thursday morning after being hit by the driver of a vehicle in downtown Toronto, paramedics say.
Police say emergency crews were called to the area of Mount Pleasant Road and Davisville Avenuein the city’s Davisville Village neighborhood at 8:45 a.m. for a report of a pedestrian struck.
Toronto Paramedic Services told CP24 that two people, an adult and a child, suffered serious but non-life-threatening injuries and were transported to a trauma centre.
The driver of the vehicle involved remained at the scene, police said.
Residents say intersection is a problem
The site of Thursday morning’s collision is not far from where an elderly woman was struck and killed by a dump truck in October 2023. In that incident, the woman was using a walker to cross from the southwest corner of Mount Pleasant Road to the east. her side of the street when she was hit by a dump truck that was turning south.
While it’s unclear if speed was a factor in either incident, residents have raised concerns in the past about a lack of traffic enforcement at the busy intersection, which includes a school, a park and several bus stops. .
Sıla Okur, who lives nearby, was at the scene of Thursday’s crash with her daughter just 20 minutes earlier. She told CTV News Toronto that she filed a complaint with the city about the intersection in 2022.
“I wrote to the city of Toronto asking for some kind of, you know… law enforcement there. And their response was ‘expected service delivery time for April 2023,’” he told CTV News Toronto in an interview. “I think it was around that time, they installed a box that looked like a speed trap or a camera for a few months, it sat there, and then they took it down and nothing else was done.”
Okur said the fact that more hasn’t been done to address safety issues is frustrating. He urged the city to take immediate steps to increase safety for pedestrians and motorists in the area.
“It’s important to us, it’s important to everyone in the neighborhood. And what makes it so much worse is that I asked about this and they just ignored us. “That’s what really made me angry about everything today.”
CTV News Toronto reached out to the City of Toronto for comment but did not receive a response.
Councilor calls for “immediate interventions”
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Coun. Josh Matlow said the victims are a mother and her son.
“We all look forward to their recovery and will be there for them as a community,” he said, adding that a “new design” for Davisville Avenue is in the works.
Meanwhile, Matlow said he has asked the city to install “immediate interventions” at crosswalks in the area, including closing the sidewalk lane when necessary.
“While we need to know the outcome of the police investigation to inform the most useful actions, everything possible that can be done to improve safe crossing must and will be done,” he said.
With files from Joshua Freeman of CP24