Cops drive Merton/Mt Pleasant accident car to collect facts

Toronto accident reconstruction police remained at the corner of Mt. Pleasant Rd. and Merton Street Tuesday night putting a 2010 Cadillac STS through tests to see what happened when an elderly woman was run down about 4.30 p.m. Above, an officer stops the car in mid-intersection and colleagues (left) come to see the visibility. Police have accessed the car’s black box and taken photographs through the windshield of the Caddy in an attempt to see what the driver saw in the critical seconds before the woman was hit. She is in Sunnybrook Hospital with a serious head injury. Witnesses in the big Esso On-the-Run station on the northeast corner said the victim was bleeding profusely at the scene. They said they did not think that she had been run over by the car but had been knocked down. The vehicle was eastbound on Merton. It made a left turn onto northbound Mt. Pleasant, striking the woman somewhere closer to the east side than the west.

Accident occurred before dark

Police would not confirm that the woman was crossing from west to east. The George Barker Manor home for seniors sits on the northwest corner but no one was able to say whether the woman lived there.  The accident closed Mt Pleasant from Balliol Street to Moore Ave. Merton Street was closed from Pailton Cres (west of Mt. Pleasant) to Cleveland Street to the east. The accident occurred just before sunset. Traffic was backed up on Mt. Pleasant and the 74 Mt. Pleasant bus was diverting east at Moore. Cars and trucks normally forbidden from entry into Moore Park and across to Bayview were piled up by the thousands in that neighborhood. At Sunnybrook Hospital, the woman, 75, was said to have a “serious head injury.”