Two Whistler, B.C. cyclists killed in crash north of Pemberton, according to RCMP reports
The Whistler Cycling Club is mourning the deaths of two of its members today, following reports of a Sunday collision that killed both themselves and one other person — a passenger in the car that struck them. The driver, reports also say, may have been impaired at the time of the deadly crash.
“I just feel hollow,” said Gary Baker, the Club’s vice president, confirming to the CBC that the two deceased members were indeed part of the same organization.
“They’re both such great guys.”
The collision happened on Highway 99 in British Columbia, about 50 kilometres northeast of Whistler, around noon Pacific Time on Sunday, May 31. According to reports from the Pemberton RCMP, a man “drove into the group of three cyclists just north of Mount Currie,” to quote the CBC, and two of them were killed as a result, as well as a male passenger in the vehicle. The driver, meanwhile was injured in the crash, and has since been airlifted to a hospital in Vancouver, according to the RCMP.
“It’s a very serious case,” the Mounties’ spokesman, Staff Sgt. Steve LeClair, told the CBC. “We’ve notified the immediate families and are giving them the opportunity to notify extended family and friends. We have not positively identified the passenger in the vehicle — the deceased passenger.”
As well, “We have notified the families of the two cyclists,” LeClair reported.
While nothing about the case apart from the vehicles involved and the deaths and injuries that resulted is legally conclusive at this time, there are certain matters about the situation, the CBC said, that are nonetheless telling, even if anecdotal. One such report comes from Baker himself, reporting what he had heard — a scenario that reads like a cyclist’s nightmare scenario.
“They’re coming down at a rate of high speed,” Baker said, sourcing an unknown party. “The two of them gapped, and all of a sudden he heard a bang and he knew what happened and apparently the driver had crossed the road and hit them.”
The matter remains with the RCMP.
