One person dead following Highway 401 crash in Cambridge, Ont.

CTV's Karis Mapp speaks to a mother who was in the thick of the fatal Highway 401 crash in Cambridge involving nine cars and a transport truck with her child.

One person has died after an eastbound multi-vehicle crash Saturday on Highway 401 near Townline Road in Cambridge, Ont.

Emergency services responded to the collision around 12:30 p.m., where OPP confirmed to CTV News a collision involving at least eight vehicles.

One person was airlifted to hospital, with other injuries and their extent unknown.

Police confirmed lanes had reopened around 11 p.m.

OPP Sgt. Kerry Schmidt told CTV News Sunday morning the incident involved around nine vehicles and a transport truck and that the person airlifted was pronounced dead in hospital.

“A transport truck collided into the back of slowing or stopped traffic resulting in approximately 16 people with injuries sent to hospital. One of the injured, a driver of a passenger vehicle was taken to hospital with critical injuries, (where) he was later pronounced deceased in hospital,” he said in an email statement.

The driver of the transport truck was not injured in the crash and was arrested at the scene for dangerous driving.

Further details on the extent of injuries to the 15 others in the crash remains unknown.

“The investigation is ongoing. No charges have been laid at this time, the driver was released unconditionally pending the outcome of the investigation,” Schmidt said.

Additional updates on specific details of the case are expected.

A mother’s account

Aumatul Majeed was driving on Highway 401 near Townline Road Saturday afternoon with her three-year-old son in the backseat when she realized something was off in her rear-view mirror.

“What happened was we were coming very fast, and then all of the sudden, in my GPS, I noticed that the line is all going red. So I understood that the rush was coming up. So we were all slowing down slowly, and all of a sudden in my back mirror view, I saw the car hitting the car, the truck coming very fast hitting the cars behind me,” she said.

“I kind of tried to go a bit faster and turning around a little bit right to maybe save myself from being hit from the back, because I knew at that moment that it’s going to hit two cars. So I was like trying to save myself. But it happened so quick, very, very quick that I couldn’t save myself either...my car did not hit anything, so I believe that means we were the last one to (be) hit.”

In the heat of the moment, all Majeed was concerned about was the safety of her child.

“When it happened, all I could at that time think about was my son.I was lost for a second, and I was trying to keep opening the same door from my side there, to access my son. But that door was jammed because that was the side that was hit,” Majeed recalled. “I was so nervous of the gas tank. What if it blows or anything, right? So I ran to the other side and I just opened the belt and took him out quickly, all I could think about was my son. It was like a shock. I was very nervous and shaking, and my son was crying.”

After getting to safety, Majeed and her son were taken to WRHN at Midtown (formerly known as Grand River Hospital) where they were both released after several tests.

Although they didn’t suffer serious physical injuries, the event left scars elsewhere.

“In the morning I woke up crying. I was telling to my husband, ‘what if my car was the second or the third one? What if my car was that GMC car? And what if I wasn’t even able to see you or my son?’ So it was that that shook me again in the morning. It was really, really bad,” Majeed said. “I also noticed my son was crying all night... he was waking up crying. Honestly, I’m still in shock. It’s hard to even process everything and even think about how it happened.”

Following the incident, Majeed hopes that it will serve as a wake up call to drivers in Waterloo Region and beyond.

“Stay alert, slow down when traffic changes, leave enough space in between vehicles like the rule is that at least two cars … every single day we’re hearing about these accidents in the Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge area, it is going very crazy,“ she said.

Majeed also made reference to the province’s new legislation increasing the speed limit from 100km/h to 110/km, explaining that drivers will need to be “more alert” than before.