Three injured after car slams into bus

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This article was published 22/02/2018 (2247 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ALCOHOL and speed are being blamed for a crash early Friday that sent a Winnipeg Transit bus spinning across the road, before hitting an apartment building.

Three people were injured when a car struck a bus on Goulet Street at Traverse Avenue in St. Boniface at about 3:50 a.m.

The driver of the sedan — a man in his 20s — was taken to hospital in critical condition, police said, adding they later spoke with him and he was expected to live.

The other two people injured — a woman in her 20s who was in the car, and the female driver of the bus, who is in her 50s — were in stable condition, police said.

Police said the bus was in service when it was struck and had one passenger on board, a man who was not injured.

Winnipeg Police Service spokesman Const. Jay Murray said alcohol and speed are considered factors in the collision.

“You can only imagine the amount of force it takes to spin a bus around. We’re fortunate nobody was killed,” Murray said.

Police said the bus had the right of way and was westbound on Goulet Street when the car sped through the intersection at Traverse Avenue, slamming the tail end of the bus and sending it spinning down Goulet.

The bus ended up facing the wrong way on the one-way street, after going across the boulevard, a sidewalk and a patch of green space in front of the apartment block. The bus came to rest with its front end against the apartment building.

Damage to the building was minimal.

“That must have been interesting, waking up at four in the morning with a bus crashing into your apartment,” an employee at a nearby gas station said.

Goulet remained closed Friday morning between Traverse and Braemar avenues. The intersection was expected to be open in time for the Friday afternoon rush hour.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca