RCMP in the Comox Valley is investigating an incident that claimed the life of a 44-year-old man who was struck when he was walking along Ryan Road early Friday morning (June 28) in Courtenay.
First responders were called to a location halfway up Ryan Road hill shortly after 3 a.m. when a northbound Mini Cooper collided with a pedestrian on its way up the hill.
Const. Monika Terragni of the Comox Valley RCMP says despite the effort of those trying to rescue the man, he died at the scene.
She says the driver of the vehicle was distraught and was assisted by victim services.
“The driver stayed behind, co-operated with investigators and at this point we still are investigating but it looks like there is not any criminality involved from what we can tell,” Terragni says.
Terragni says there was a witness to the accident who was following a distance behind the vehicle involved and observed the vehicle quickly swerve at the time of the accident.
The road was closed for approximately four hours as the investigation continued.
Terragni says while police have a lot of evidence already from the scene she welcomes anyone who would have witnessed the victim walking to contact police.
The incident portion of Ryan Road has no overhead lighting and it is not clear at this point whether the pedestrian was walking on the roadway or the narrow pathway that runs adjacent to the side of the road.
”Those are going to be the kind of things we’re going to be looking at moving forward. I can tell you that it does get quite dark, last night it was raining, misting and it would have been quite dark at three o’clock in the morning” she says.
Investigating officers could be seen examining extensive damage to the vehicle’s windshield and front-right fender which resulted from the impact.
The name of the victim has not been released and Terragni says the unfortunate incident serves as a reminder to both drivers and pedestrians.
”There is always something we can improve upon, Ryan Road is a very dark road at night because it doesn’t have lights so it’s absolutely prudent for any pedestrians that are walking along Ryan Road or any dark road in our community to be wearing things that make themselves very very visible” she adds.
