While police in Laval, Que., are still piecing together what happened, witness accounts gathered over the two days following the accident provide a harrowing account of those first moments.
LAVAL, Que. - It was just before 8:30 a.m. Wednesday when André Beaudoin pulled into the parking lot to bring his two-year-old son to daycare. The Garderie Éducative Ste-Rose in Laval, Que., was busy, with parents stopping to drop off their children for the day.
Hamdi Benchaabane, who lives next door to the daycare, quickly knew something was wrong. He’s used to watching buses slowly navigate the roundabout at the end of his dead-end street to pull up at the bus stop in front of his house. This one instead made a sharp turn into the daycare’s driveway and headed straight for the building at a speed he estimates was 30 or 40 kilometres an hour.
Soon after, more parents and neighbours arrived — some helping to restrain the driver and others gathering the rest of the children. As pieces of the ceiling fell, Benchaabane remembers helping one child to safety. But there was at least one trapped child they couldn’t reach, he said. At about 9:15 a.m., Geneviève Berthiaume Gagnon received a news alert on her phoneabout a bus crash at the daycare where she had dropped off her daughter, Chloé, an hour earlier. She left work and raced to the scene.
The uninjured children in the daycare were gathered onto buses to be taken to a nearby elementary school, where educators and police officers kept them calm and entertained with games and snacks.