Pedestrian injured at King and University

At approximately 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, a collision between a vehicle and a pedestrian occurred at the intersection of King Street and University Avenue right in front of Wilfrid Laurier University.

According witnesses, the pedestrian was rollerblading from the university towards the intersection and cut left onto oncoming traffic where a red Chevrolet pick-up truck struck the pedestrian.

A Waterloo Regional Police officer at the scene said, “Their injuries don’t appear to be life threatening, they’re being transported to a hospital right now for treatment and that’s all we know at this point.”

An ambulance and emergency services came to the scene to attend to the injured person, who was a 21-year-old male from Chatham. As of now, it is only known to be non-life threatening injuries, but that is yet to be confirmed.

It is also still undetermined whether or not the injured pedestrian is a student at either WLU or the University of Waterloo.

Bystanders flooded the scene and the intersection was temporarily closed at the time of the incident. Police officers on both sides of the intersection slowly filtered traffic through the intersection.

Many witnesses and bystanders were shocked to see what happened. “It was quite loud when he got hit,” one witness told The Cord.

Three student witnesses – who chose to remain anonymous, were all trained in first-aid and went to the victim as soon as he was hit.

“We saw him hit the car, flip over,” a student said. “He basically came down the hill, turned left and cut across oncoming traffic and was hit.”

All three students stated that there was already a green light and there “wasn’t much the driver could do.”

The driver of the vehicle was visibly distraught and upset as he spoke to the police, pacing back and forth in front of the police cruiser.

His vehicle took considerable damage on the front end, where the grill was bent in and the windshield was severely cracked.

This is not first time an incident has occurred at that intersection. Last winter, six pedestrians were hit in a two-car collision.