The name of a second of the victims of the Christmas Eve bus crash on the Okanagan Connector has been confirmed.
CBC News is reporting that 18-year-old Kathy Kim Le was one of the four passengers killed when a Vancouver-bound bus lost control on Highway 97C, crossed the meridian and landed on its side.
According to CBC, Le was taking the bus back to Vancouver after visiting a friend in sa国际传媒. She had wanted to fly but the extreme weather at the time had forced cancellation of almost all flights into Vancouver International Airport.
Bill Gerber, an Abbotsford resident who with his wife and daughter came upon the chaotic accident scene shortly after it happened, told the Daily Courier in an earlier interview that he found a cellphone that later turned out to be Lesa国际传媒.
Her family, concerned that she was overdue in Vancouver, later called the cellphone, which Gerbersa国际传媒 daughter answered.
鈥淢y daughter had to gently break the news that there had been an accident. They wanted to know if we had seen that person. They sent us a picture of a young Asian girl but we didn鈥檛 know her and suggested they call the hospitals,鈥 Gerber said.
The RCMP later called Lesa国际传媒 family to tell them she had died in the accident, Gerber said, and sometime after that he and his family delivered the phone to them.
鈥淢y daughter was kind of the last connection for them,鈥 he said. 鈥淎s any parent, you don鈥檛 want to believe that news and you would be wanting to hear something different.鈥
None of the victims of the bus crash have been officially identified, however a second passenger, Karanjot Singh Sodi, 41, was previously named in a Canadian Press story as one of dead.
Sodi was a new arrival from Punjab, India, who left behind a wife and two children in his home town of Amritsar.
Gerber said he knew of another passenger, an older woman traveling with her daughter, who died at the scene.
鈥淚 guess the mother got trapped and banged around pretty bad,鈥 he said.
The cause of the crash is still under investigation but RCMP have said a contributing cause was the weather and road conditions at the time. There were 46 people on the bus at the time of the accident and police have said the majority of the passengers were not wearing the seat belts provided.
Alberta-based Ebus and the driver of the bus are said to be cooperating with the authorities. The bus itself remains impounded as part of the investigation.
