image, sad, tragedy

Her name is Maria Legenkovska and on her walk to school Tuesday morning this past week she was struck by a car and was killed. She was a seven year old girl with two siblings and their mom who have fled from Ukraine due to the war where Maria's father is still there, fighting for Ukraine.

This is what has affected me enough to consider posting this post - they flee a war torn country in search of safety and yet a week before Christmas this young girl dies. It is a heart breaking story.

It happened somewhere within or very close to this intersection:

The driver whose car hit her left the scene but the next day turned himself in. It is wrong that he left the scene, in fact, likely criminal, but turning himself in shows he isn't 100% a bad person. The issue is bigger than this little girl and this driver.

There is a tunnel (the Louis-Hippolyte tunnel) that is undergoing an extended reconstruction that is compelling drivers to drive through smaller neighbourhood streets aiming to get to the Jacques Cartier bridge as an alternate route to get to the South Shore. The corner of Parthenais and de Rouen are very close to the entrance to that bridge. Also, Parthenais is a hill that goes down, with the bottom of that hill close to where it crosses de Rouen, and so cars are often going too fast to make a proper stop at de Rouen.

As a budding urbanist (in my 180?? days) I am dreaming of the time when cars are meaningfully quaternary to pedestrians, cyclists and public transit. In the mean time additional safety measures have been put into that specific intersection, and further study and effort will be done to make all school zones safer.

I pilgrimed to the site this morning as I had no other plans. Unfortunately it had snowed quite heavily the previous day and night and so the makeshift memorial that was setup at that intersection was snow covered:

Here is the photo of her closer:

Two of the electric candles were still glowing at the time I arrived:

I decided to do my best to clear the snow off of the memorial, there were many stuffed animals and flowers under the snow, a few wet and smudged letters.

And here is that intersection from the corner diagonally opposite from where this memorial was put:

I know that Maria's mom, and any of the Ukrainian support she is receiving here in my city, will not ever come across this blog; but just the same her family is in my prayers this Christmas as it must be terribly difficult for the mom and especially her siblings who were a witness to this dreadful accident.