A 20-year-old woman was killed Saturday afternoon while attending a fundraising event in Edmonton, after a Jeep involved in a stunt demonstration flipped on its side and struck her.
The event -- called “Jeeps Go Topless” -- was held in a shopping centre parking lot to raise funds for the Edmonton Food Bank. During the event, dozens of Jeep owners gathered in the parking lot to display their vehicles.
Police said one of the Jeeps drove up onto the tires of another vehicle in a climbing demonstration.
Witnesses said the male driver of the Jeep turned off the car’s engine and posed for pictures. But as the driver dismounted, the vehicle lurched forward, flipped on its side and struck a woman who was on top of an adjacent car.
“When he was on top of the Jeep it flipped over onto its side,” witness Desiree Hallworth told CTV Edmonton. “The girl fell to the ground.”
Bystanders rushed to perform CPR on the victim. She was taken to hospital where she was pronounced dead.
Hallworth said the driver of the Jeep that lost control was “devastated.”
“When he got out of his Jeep, he was just devastated. He fell to the ground,” she said. The driver was also taken to hospital, but is expected to survive.
Edmonton police Insp. Chad Tawfik said police are looking into what might have caused the Jeep to lose control.
“Of course we’re going to conduct the investigation to determine all the specifics around how it was organized and what was going on that led up to this,” he said.
Tawfik called the incident “traumatizing” and said victim services were called in to speak with witnesses.
“Most of these people, they’re avid motor-vehicle enthusiasts,” he said. “They come to an event like this, they’re not expecting something like this to happen.”
Police are trying to determine what might have caused the Jeep to lurch forward. Investigators are trying to see if any witnesses took videos of the stunt.
With a report from CTV Edmonton’s Breanna Karstens-Smith
