The west-Quebec community of Cantley, just north of Ottawa, is in mourning after the tragic death of a seven-year old boy.
“It’s an awful story,” says MRC des Collines-de-l’Outaouais Constable Martin Fournel, “this could happen to anyone.”
Police and paramedics were called to a family home on Rue de Rena on Sunday May 1, 2016. The family’s pick-up truck rolled down the laneway of the home, hitting and killing the young boy.
“What we know at this point is that the Dad was using the vehicle a few minutes before this happened,” Fournel says, “we know the vehicle at one point started to roll down the hill, the boy was out playing and got in the way of the pick-up truck and got run over.”
The family home is in the picturesque Mont-Cascades area known for sprawling hills and beautiful landscape, and like many in the neighbourhood, features a long steep laneway to accompany the natural terrain. As the truck began to roll, it would have quickly picked up speed, Fournel says the boy’s father went running, trying his hardest to stop the truck, “we don’t know for sure if the kid was trying to do the same thing, saw his dad trying to stop the vehicle and got in the way, but obviously he got hit by it.”
No one was in the truck at the time it started to roll. Police don’t know if the pick-up was running at the time or if it was shut off, if the vehicle slipped out of park or if it was a mechanical error. After the boy was struck, his father along with others at the home, performed CPR, but the boy was pronounced dead in hospital.
The seven-year old attended Ecole Sainte-Elisabeth in Cantley. The school has set up support for students, staff and parents to help them cope with the death.
Fournel says no charges will be laid, no one is at fault, and he wants the boy’s mother, father and older brother to know this split-second tragedy could happen to anyone, “we all play outside, we all do work outside, and we live in the country. You don’t get up in the morning and think something like this is going to happen. It’s an accident.”
