Charges have been laid against a man who police say struck his wife and son with a truck while backing into his Brampton driveway on Tuesday morning.
The crash happened at a townhouse near Conductor Lane and Portsdown Road, north of the Mount Pleasant GO train station, at around 8:30 a.m.
“They (the woman and boy) were at the driver’s door. The driver’s door was open, the driver was sitting in the driver’s side, and he backed up, striking them with I’m going to assume the door,” Toronto police Const. Bancroft Wright said.
“As a result of the contact, they were struck, and the vehicle ran over them.”
The 36-year-old woman and seven-year-old boy were initially rushed to a trauma centre with critical injuries, however both their conditions have since improved. They remain in hospital in non-life-threatening condition.
A 41-year-old Brampton man, identified by police as Jonathan Leon, was arrested at the scene. He has since been charged with two counts of criminal negligence causing bodily harm and two counts of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle.
Leon appeared in court briefly on Tuesday and was remanded into custody. He is scheduled to appear for a bail hearing on May 15.
Police said more charges, including impaired driving, are possible depending on where the investigation leads.
The suspect is the father to the child and husband to the injured woman.
“Not to say there wasn’t any impaired… There needs to be more investigation into this,” Wright said.
“We have our Major Collision Bureau on scene. They will conduct the studies in relation to that.”
The truck careened into the townhouse complex after hitting the woman and boy, crushing part of the garage door to an adjoining unit. Investigators will have to determine the structural integrity of the home before moving the vehicle.
Mike Zancai was opening up a nearby barber shop for the day when he saw the commotion on the laneway.
“I saw that the man in question had been arrested and escorted to the police cruiser,” he told CP24. “Looking further down the laneway I saw a mother and a child in the middle of the road, being tended to by some firefighters.”
Zancai said only as he came around the back of his shop did he notice the truck up against the townhouse.
“The little boy was actually sitting up, leaned up against one of the firefighters. He looked like he might’ve been in a little better shape. The woman was laying kind of motionless, they had an apparatus for breathing, like oxygen, on her face. They were tending to her wounds,” he said.
“They had towels soaked in blood. It was pretty shocking to see.”
The area surrounding the home has been cordoned off while police conduct an investigation.
