“Extremely selfless” mother of three one of two pedestrians killed by driver who also killed himself in horrific Etobicoke crash

One of the pedestrians killed in Thursday’s fatal crash in Etobicoke was an “extremely selfless” mother of three, a beloved daughter and sister who was walking over to her sibling’s house when she was struck and killed, a family friend said.

Kelly Hamilton, 43, “did everything for everyone else and was never thinking about herself,” said family friend Sabrina Szuszwalak, who described Hamilton as a funny, beautiful and smart woman who “lit up the room” and was loved by many.

She leaves behind three children, aged 7, 19 and 26. They are “lost,” Szuszwalak said.

“It is destroying her family,” Szuszwalak told the Star Friday night in an interview.

Hamilton was one of two pedestrians who had the right of way while crossing an intersection in south Etobicoke, and who died after they were hit by a speeding driver who was not supposed to be behind the wheel anywhere in Canada.

The driver died when he rammed into a parked flatbed trailer, and had been fleeing the scene of another collision he had caused just moments earlier.

According to police, the 36-year-old man was driving a white SUV eastbound on Lake Shore Boulevard West, near Eighth Street, when he struck a parked van and came to a complete stop.

“Witnesses reported to police that they believed the driver was having a seizure and was unresponsive,” traffic services superintendent Scott Baptist told reporters Friday at a news conference. Baptist said people had to break the window of the SUV, a 2020 Cadillac XT6, to get the driver out.

Sahara Ali, a nearby resident who was across the street when the incident happened, told the Star she saw the driver of the white SUV swipe the parked van.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Ali, who noted there was enough space around the street for the driver to go safely by without hitting anyone.

When the driver got out, “he seemed incoherent” and “his body language seemed dismissive, like he did nothing wrong,” she added.

A video of a man in a white SUV interacting with firefighters on Lake Shore Boulevard West surfaced on a south Etobicoke social media group late Thursday evening. In the clip, the man can be seen speaking with firefighters, before he gets into the white SUV and drives away.

A spokesperson from Toronto Fire confirmed that they were contacted about a single-vehicle accident at Lake Shore Boulevard West and Eighth Avenue around 5:24 p.m. Fire crews had a brief interaction with the driver of a white SUV at the incident. The man appeared uninjured, but suddenly chose to drive away from the scene before responding police officers arrived.

Baptist said he wasn’t sure how close officers were, but it was about 12 minutes before the driver left the scene.

This kind of incident is usually referred to a collision reporting centre for thorough investigations, he added.

Minutes later, the same driver reportedly ran through a red light at a very high speed further along the road, struck two pedestrians, then hit a parked flatbed trailer and was ejected through the windshield.

The pedestrians — Hamilton and 75-year-old man who Szuszwalak said was Hamilton’s roommate — were walking in a marked crosswalk from the northside of Lake Shore Boulevard and had the right of way. They, and the driver, were pronounced dead at the scene.

According to police, the driver, who hasn’t been identified, was facing a driving prohibition under the Criminal Code. He was also under a provincial driver’s licence medical suspension, and was facing an additional administrative provincial driver’s licence suspension.

Baptist said the driver was not the registered owner of the vehicle he was driving. He said it’s a not uncommon occurrence for officers to pull over a driver in a traffic checkup and discover their licence is suspended.

Officers continue to make traffic enforcement a priority as part of the city’s Vision Zero plan, which is intended to eliminate pedestrian fatalities, he added.

“Collisions in a city of three million people are inevitable, but the most serious collisions that are fatal and life-threatening, or serious injury collisions are, in fact, preventable,” said Baptist, who added that it’s frustrating and tragic to see traffic fatalities.

Harsh Singh, a witness, said he was waiting for the bus along Lake Shore when he saw a white SUV drive by. He noticed right away that there was damage to the front passenger side.

“I was like, ‘what happened? This is like a brand-new car, it had this big dent on the passenger side,’ ” Singh said.

He noted the car was going slowly at the time — he estimated about 20 kilometres per hour. He later came to the scene of the fatal crash, saying it appeared that the white SUV involved in that collision was the same damaged one he saw driving east.

Etobicoke-Lakeshore councillor Mark Grimes called Thursday’s collision and the deaths caused by it senseless and horrific.

“It’s heartbreaking for the families of these innocent victims, and our community is here to support them,” he said.

Szuszwalak has launched a GoFundMe fundraiser to support Hamilton’s family and cover the cost of the funeral and to go toward her children, who “are now without their mother.”

—with files from Akrit Michael

Gilbert Ngabo is a Toronto-based crime reporter for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @dugilbo