Fatal crashes caused by weather, heart attack: police
Cops ID Good Samaritan as Parry Sound-area man
Posted By RAYMOND BOWE
Posted 22 days ago
Severe weather and a medical condition led to a pair of fatal crashes on Highway 400, Tuesday, according to provincial police.
Police have identified the Good Samaritan killed in a multi-vehicle crash, Tuesday morning, north of Barrie, as a Parry Sound-area man who was a volunteer firefighter and former police auxiliary officer in his hometown.
Steven Fleming, 52, of McDougall Township, was a longtime Bell Canada employee.
Southern Georgian Bay OPP officers responded to the scene around 10 a.m., where they found vehicle debris strewn across the highway near Honey Harbour in Georgian Bay Township, about an hour north of Barrie.
An unexpected winter storm had swept in off Georgian Bay, hammering the area with wet snow and hail, which instantly turned to ice when it hit the highway. The severe weather initially caused a four-vehicle crash near Whites Falls Road around 10 a.m., followed by a second crash shortly afterward.
"It was just a very freak combination of Mother Nature coming together all in one area and pretty much depositing whatever she could," Const. Peter Leon said Wednesday morning from OPP headquarters in Orillia. "It was rain, sleet, hail, snow — you name, they got it. It made the road very, very slippery. As a result, there was a chain reaction-type (sequence) of events in the area."
Two Bell Canada employees, including Fleming, stopped to assist a driver involved in the initial collision when a second crash happened north of their location.
Fleming was struck and killed by a southbound vehicle, which was sliding on the slippery road, as he went to help the driver of another vehicle involved in the second crash after it struck a rock cut.
Provincial police said Fleming had been a volunteer firefighter for more than eight years with the McDougall Township Fire Department, as well as an auxiliary officer with the Parry Sound OPP detachment.
Four other people were taken by ambulance to Huronia District Hospital in Midland for medical treatment following the crash.
About four hours later, a medical condition led to another Highway 400 crash near Bradford, about a half-hour south of Barrie.
OPP Sgt. Dave Woodford said the truck driver involved in that accident suffered a heart attack prior to the crash, which is what police had suspected shortly after the accident occurred around 2 p.m., south of Highway 89.
The heart attack caused the 63-year-old London man's vehicle to leave the road and climb an embankment before coming back onto the highway where it crossed three southbound lanes, went through the guard rail and then across three northbound lanes before coming to rest on the opposite embankment.
Paramedics were able to revive the man, but he was later pronounced dead at Stevenson Memorial Hospital in Alliston.
An autopsy was conducted Wednesday.
Because it was a medical condition that led to the crash, Woodford said the man's name would not be released.
rbowe@thebarrieexaminer.com
