On July 18, 2017, members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police—accompanied by representatives from the Lytton Fire and Rescue Department and BC Ambulance—held an event at the Caboose Park in Lytton to recognize two citizens of the Lytton area for their actions at the scenes of two separate serious motor vehicle collisions over the past year.
Constable Xavier Pilon made the following statement: “Lytton is a small community that has lived and continues to live through a fair share of trauma. One of the challenges that we deal with as emergency services, but also as a community, is frequent serious motor vehicle collisions on our roads.As emergency services personnel, we are blessed to have a significant amount of training and experience responding to collisions; but even with all that, those situations are often challenging to deal with.
“The reason we are here today is that, over the course of the last year, we have noticed two community members in particular who really stood out at the scenes of serious motor vehicle collisions and whose actions truly made a difference in the successful response to those situations. Ultimately, their actions ensured the well-being of all victims involved.
“Their quick thinking and ability to remain calm at the onset, and their ability to remember important details after the fact, were crucial to the response and also to the investigations into the collisions. We thought they should be recognized for going above and beyond.
“On October 4, 2016, Jocelyn Dunstan was in her house directly above an accident scene on the Trans-Canada Highway in Siska. Jocelyn heard a loud noise below her house. From living at that location most of her life, she had previously been exposed to motor vehicle collisions nearby, and thought that might be another one of those.
“She immediately ran down to the highway to assist. Once she arrived, what she observed was basically a scene of chaos, with several damaged vehicles off to the side of the road, as well as a pickup truck sitting on its roof. She approached the overturned truck and heard someone yelling inside. Two occupants were trapped inside the cab of the truck, and the driver couldn’t get his seatbelt off.
“Jocelyn found a knife on the ground nearby and assisted the driver by helping him cut his seatbelt and get him and his passenger out of the truck. Both driver and passenger have since recovered from what turned out to be minor injuries.
“On May 3, 2017, 16-year-old Patrick Gordon Maw, who most people know as ‘Sunny’, was making his way down Botanie Creek Road when he came upon an overturned pickup truck. He ran over to the truck and saw four injured people on the ground, two of them who looked to be pinned underneath the truck. He checked for basic signs of life, then went back around to the front of the truck and noticed the cab was crushed. He realized two more people were trapped inside.
“The windshield was partly broken. Patrick kicked a hole through the windshield and then managed to pry it open wider.The two trapped occupants were then able to crawl out of the crushed cab of the truck.
“Patrick then went to his grandmother’s house which was several kilometers down the road and provided an accurate account of what he saw, which helped us dispatch the proper resources. He helped his grandma load up some supplies, who then went up there to help out as well.”
Both Dunstan and Maw were presented with RCMP Awards of Recognition by Lytton RCMP Constable Xavier Pilon.
editorial@accjournal.ca
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