A one-year-old girl is in critical condition and two others have suffered “life-altering injuries,” police say, after a fiery crash on Highway 417 during rush hour Friday.
An Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) spokesperson said they received a call shortly after 4 p.m. for a crash involving multiple vehicles on the highway near Palladium Drive and Carp Road in Stittsville.
Ottawa paramedics said they responded to a three-vehicle crash and treated seven patients.
One child, whom OPP later identified as a one-year-old girl, was airlifted in life-threatening condition to a children’s trauma centre following the crash, paramedics said Friday.
A three-year-old girl, a woman and a man also sustained life-threatening injuries and were taken by ground to trauma centres, paramedics said.
Another man was seriously injured and was taken to hospital in stable condition, they added, while two others were treated on scene and didn’t require hospitalization.
In an update Saturday, OPP Const. Michael Fathi said the one-year-old was still in critical condition at CHEO, eastern Ontario’s children’s hospital.
Two others remained in hospital with “life-altering” injuries, Fathi said, although their conditions were stable. The other two people taken to hospital had been released, he said.
Vehicle caught fire
Dan Kirvan, a spokesperson for the special operations unit of Ottawa Fire Services, told CBC News that one of the three vehicles involved caught fire.
He said fire crews extricated one person from one vehicle.
All lanes of the highway were shut down west of Palladium Drive immediately after the collision, OPP said in a social media post just before 4:30 p.m.
OPP told CBC News in an email around 6 a.m. Saturday that the highway fully reopened overnight.