HALIFAX, NS –
A GoFundMe account was created to help the family of a woman who was beaten and killed while crossing a street in Dartmouth on Wednesday.
Suete Chan, 27, had moved to Nova Scotia from Hong Kong to work as a marketing manager for FaireChild Clothing.
He was just days away from his 28th birthday and had plans to celebrate by attending his first hockey game. However, as he walked to work, everything changed.
“She talked to her parents every day on the way to work on the phone,” says Tabitha Osler, Chan’s boss.
“I know she was talking to them when they hit her.”
Chan’s parents, who live in Hong Kong, would learn that their daughter was hit by a vehicle at a crosswalk on Pleasant Street and died that same day at the hospital.
Halifax Regional Police fines a driver for failing to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk. The ticket has not been proven in court.
Olser remembers her colleague as an avid traveler and photographer, with close friends.
“She is very sweet and pure,” says Osler.
“My role now is to support his family, in his honor, in every way possible that I can and I will.”
Osler launched a GoFundMe page to help Chan’s parents and more than $ 64,000 has been raised.
Osler is also raising questions, such as whether the street can be redesigned.
“You should never have a four-lane crossing without any kind of notification to slow down the cars they notice,” Osler says.
Area Councilman Sam Austin says Chan is the second person to die while walking that stretch of Pleasant Street in the past two and a half years.
“I spoke with the director of transportation that afternoon,” Austin says.
“The staff is going to take a detailed look at this section where there have been two deaths along this stretch of the road.”
Norm Collins, a crosswalk safety advocate has several suggestions on how the road can be improved, including adding a concrete island in the middle of the road, rumble strips in front of the crosswalk, flags of crosswalk and more lights at eye level.
“Nothing is absolute and certainly nothing will guarantee that tragedies will not occur, but every little bit and extra measure that is put around these dangerous intersections and crosswalks has to help,” says Collins.
“Soundtracks seem like a very inexpensive easy (thing) to me and it’s just another trigger for the driver, something is happening later on.”
Osler plans for his company Fairechild Clothing to pay for Chan’s parents to come to Nova Scotia in the next few days. She says she will help with a translator and whatever it takes.
The money raised through the GoFundMe page will go to Chan’s parents. She was his only daughter.
Reference-atlantic.ctvnews.ca