Party bus fatality prompts calls to shut business down
Posted January 10, 2016 12:21 pm.
Last Updated January 11, 2016 10:03 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER – Vancouver Police have released more details about this weekend’s party bus collision that left one woman dead.
Sgt. Randy Fincham says about two dozen people were celebrating a birthday inside a party bus in the city’s downtown core on Saturday night.
A 23-year-old woman inside the bus fell out through an open door as the vehicle made a left-hand turn from West Hastings Street onto Burrard Street around 9:30 p.m.
Fincham says she was struck by the bus, after which passengers alerted the driver and he immediately stopped.
Paramedics pronounced the woman dead at the scene but her name has not been released.
Police say the bus driver is co-operating with them.
Danielle Raymond’s sister Shannon died of an overdose after taking a ride on a party bus in 2008.
Changes to the industry were introduced by the province last year, but Raymond says more needs to be done.
“Everybody needs to take this issue more seriously. It is preventable. We can’t continue to pretend that it’s not important, because it is important and people are literally dying in our province because of this.”
She would like to see party buses be banned completely.
“We don’t need party buses. They don’t add any value at all to anything in our province really. In a perfect world I’d like to see them gone but no one seems prepared to take that initiative.”
