20 people dead in separate road and highway crashes in B.C. within week

VANCOUVER – Twenty people have died on British Columbia’s highways and roads in the last week, 11 of them within the last 24 hours.

Coroner Barb McLintock said Friday that investigations have yet to determine if weather conditions and impaired or distracted driving were involved in the carnage.

“Depressing, definitely,” she said of the fatalities involving seven drivers, six passengers, three pedestrians, two motorcyclists, one bicyclist and one all-terrain vehicle driver.

Five people died in two separate crashes near Fort St. John on Thursday.

RCMP Cpl. Jodie Shelkie said that when police arrived at a two-vehicle crash on the Alaska Highway, both drivers and the passengers in each of the vehicles were dead.

An hour later, a 29-year-old man from the northern community was killed in another crash.

RCMP in Langley, east of Vancouver, said a male driver was killed Friday morning when he was thrown from his vehicle during a rollover. Police are also investigating the death of an 83-year-old pedestrian.

Police in the Fraser Valley community of Abbotsford said a woman in her 20s was killed Friday morning after her car crashed into another vehicle carrying a man and two young children.

On Thursday morning, three people died in a head-on crash in foggy conditions on Highway 97 near Quesnel.

(The Canadian Press, CHNL, Moose FM)