Four teenagers are in hospital after a single-vehicle crash in Whitby early Thursday morning, including a 16-year-old girl who police say was thrown up to 100 feet as a result of the force of impact.
The collision happened along a rural stretch of Myrtle Road near Baldwin Street at around 5:35 a.m.
Const. Nick Gluckstein told CP24 that at least one nearby resident said the crash was so loud that it felt like a “fighter jet was flying by their house.”
He said that the vehicle left the roadway and ended up on its roof in a wooded area.
Two people were ejected from the vehicle, including a 16-year-old girl who was later airlifted to hospital with critical injuries.
“She was ejected between 50 to 100 feet outside of the vehicle, and it wasn’t until after officers had already arrived on scene and heard cries for help that they located her about 100 feet away,” Gluckstein said.
“So quite an alarming distance to be ejected from the vehicle, significant, significant injuries, but luckily our medical personnel and officers acted quickly.”
Gluckstein said that an 18-year-old male and a 19-year-old male were transported to a Toronto-area trauma centre with serious injuries following the crash. The fourth victim, a 14-year-old male, was taken to a local hospital with minor injuries.
The circumstances surrounding the collision remain unclear and Gluckstein said that officers will be looking into whether speed may have been a factor.
“The posted limit on that roadway is 70 kilometres per hour, but as you can imagine, at 5:30 in the morning with nobody on the roadway and clear visibility, somebody could take the opportunity to travel at an extremely high rate of speed,” he said.
“Whether they were doing that is up to the investigators and they will figure that out through their investigation as they track exactly how the vehicle travelled along the roadway.”
Police say that Myrtle Road is closed in both directions between Baldwin Street and Ashburn Road for an investigation.
