SUV with No Driver Inside Rolls Forward, Crushing 5-Year-Old Girl Walking in Front
The world is a fallen place, and it too often seems as though chaos and cruel fate run wild around us.
A cynical assessment, sure, but the sad case of five-year-old resident of Toronto, Canada, Camila Torcato is enough to turn even the most cheery individual sad.
Though you wouldn’t guess it to look at her picture, little Camila was a fighter. At the tender age of 2, she received the diagnosis that every parent fears: cancer.
Her mother and father, Catarina Rodrigues and Amilcar Torcato, watched her undergo multiple surgeries on her kidneys and lungs, as well as extensive chemotherapy.
She was about to celebrate her first anniversary of completing cancer treatment when Torcato came to pick her up from St. Raphael Catholic School on Jan. 15.
“I went to pick her up in school because the day before she asked me if I could,” he told The Toronto Star. “Usually her mom picks her up, but that day I did.”
What happened next was pure horror: As Camila was about to get in her car, an unoccupied SUV rolled forward and crushed her against the vehicle.
Her father stayed with her for an undetermined period before Camila was eventually freed. She was rushed to a nearby hospital, but doctors were completely at sea given the damage her small frame had suffered.
The impact had caused internal bleeding and her organs had begun to shut down. She passed away not long after.
The worst part of the whole incident was the experts say it wasn’t entirely unexpected.
Ontario Safety League president Brian Patterson noted that area schools have become less safe in the past decade.
“We’ve got people rushing kids in and out of school, we’ve got up to 100 vehicles, in some cases, dropping kids within a 20-minute period,” he said. “And unfortunately, as you get closer and closer to the start of the school day, the more and more dangerous the area is.”
Is there a silver lining to this very dark cloud? Perhaps. Toronto District School Board spokesperson Ryan Bird says his agency is working hard to manage traffic around the state’s schools.
The community has also rallied around Rodrigues and Torcato, raising nearly $38,000 as of press time through a GoFundMe campaign.
And then there are the memories, recollections of a beautiful life well lived, no matter its brevity.
“She was definitely an angel,” family friend Ana Paula Carrera told CBC News. “She was very adventurous, but she was also always careful, watching the little ones.”
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