The accident that killed Marites Mendoza has the city talking. And nowhere was the conversation more poignant than at the modest apartment building where she lived with her young daughter and the baby boy who narrowly escaped dying with his mother.
"I just saw the kids in the hall this weekend," neighbour Raul Velasco said. "Everyone's shocked. It's awful."
Ms. Mendoza died early Tuesday afternoon when a car went through a red light as she crossed Martin Grove Road at Eglinton Avenue, pushing her seven-week-old son in a stroller. The stroller was clipped by the car, but the baby survived almost unscathed after another pedestrian picked him up from the road. Ms. Mendoza was not so lucky - she was trapped underneath a 1995 Toyota Camry driven by an 83-year-old woman. She was pronounced dead 17 minutes after ambulances were first called to the scene.
Ms. Mendoza, 31, was reportedly separated from her husband, and lived with her two children in an apartment complex at the corner of the intersection where she died. She regularly attended Iglesia Ni Cristo, a church on Burnhamthorpe Road that has a high percentage of Filipinos in its congregation.
"She was here with her children all the time," said Arnold Villanueva, a church volunteer. "It's hard to believe what happened."
Detectives from Toronto Traffic Services have extensively interviewed the woman who drove the car that killed Ms. Mendoza. Police spokesman Constable Hugh Smith said charges against the woman are pending, likely under the Ontario Traffic Act, not the Criminal Code. Police have ordered a detailed mechanical inspection of the car, but have not yet uncovered any problems that could have contributed to the accident.
Police said Ms. Mendoza was making her way across the pedestrian crosswalk on a green light when she was hit. Her view of the oncoming car appears to have been obscured by an SUV parked in the left turn lane of Martin Grove Road. Another pedestrian, walking just a few metres ahead, heard the collision and recovered Ms. Mendoza's infant son from the street.
The accident has raised questions about road design. The intersection where Ms. Mendoza died has had a high number of red-light infractions. The city installed a red-light camera in November, 2000, and has issued thousands of tickets, according to Mike Brady, manager of traffic safety for Toronto Transportation Services.
The majority of red-light violations take place on eastbound Eglinton Avenue, Mr. Brady said. After studying the intersection, he attributes the violations to the nature of the street, a wide-open suburban arterial road with widely spaced intersections that lead to higher-than-average speeds.
Over the past five years, there have been 137 serious collisions at the intersection, with 32 fatalities, including three pedestrians. The accident that killed Ms. Mendoza took place in the northbound lanes of Martin Grove, which has a lower rate than east-west Eglinton, where more than 75 per cent of the serious accidents have taken place.
Ms. Mendoza's children are now in the care of the Children's Aid Society.