Coquitlam RCMP partially shut down the intersection of Mariner Way and Riverview Crescent Tuesday morning as part of a partial re-enactment into the fatal collision that left one girl dead and one boy in hospital.
At least a half dozen police cruisers and two utility trucks from the city of Coquitlam chocked the intersection to provide a safe corridor northbound along Mariner Way.
With Sgt. Quentin Frewing behind the wheel of a black unmarked police cruiser, the re-enactment focused on the perspective of the BMW that, at the time of the March 25 collision, spun into a pedestrian island where five children were standing.
The police vehicle made several passes up the hill and through the intersection, duplicating the speeds and trajectories of the BMW while an in-car video camera captured the perspective of the driver.
“That will give us an idea of what sight lines are like,” said Frewing.
Full or partial re-enactments are fairly routine procedures in the course of a traffic investigation, according to RCMP, and are used to get a clearer picture of the events leading up to a collision or the collision itself.
Shutting down the intersection during one of these re-enactments is all about safety, said Frewing.
“If we have the road completely open, we have cars flying through, or driving through turning left, turning right, it can be unsafe for us,” he said. “We want to control the positions of all the vehicles.”
Six weeks after the death of Deborah Seol, a Grade 8 student at Montgomery middle school in Coquitlam, police say both drivers are cooperating with the investigation, but that no charges will be considered until the investigation is complete.
The GoFundMe page set up to support the girl’s family has raised $31,000 of its $100,000 goal.
