A speeding Tesla collided with a guard rail before bursting into flames in Canada early Thursday morning – killing four people and only leaving one lone survivor.
A pair of siblings, Ketaba and Nil Gohil from Gujarat, were traveling with Jairaj Singh Sisodia and Digvijay Patel on Lake Shore Boulevard East, just west of Don Roadway in downtown Toronto around midnight on Thursday, The Star reported.
Just before 12.15am, the driver of the 2024 Tesla lost control – colliding with a guard rail, which then struck a concrete pillar and ultimately exploded.
All four were dead at the scene.
‘We were on the opposite side of the river and we heard the tires squealing and we heard the impact,’ Keith Barrow, a foreman at QM environmental, told The Star.
A 2024 Tesla collided with a guard rail and then a concrete pillar before exploding in downtown Toronto, in Canada, early Thursday morning – taking the lives of four people
A pair of siblings, Ketaba and Nil Gohil from Gujarat, and friends Jairaj Singh Sisodia and Digvijay Patel – all in their 20s and 30s – were pronounced dead at the scene
‘So I drove over to DVP and Lake Shore and by that time, the flames were 20, maybe 30 feet high. It was scary to see.’
By the time Burrow arrived to the crash site around three minutes later, roughly five other cars had already pulled over and were attempting to break the burning vehicle’s windows.
Another passerby, Rick Harper, remembered seeing the Tesla dark and full of smoke. Tragically, he described hearing faint voices which were ‘letting out yells,’ Toronto CTV News reported.
When firefighters arrived and extinguished the blaze, three men and a woman – all in their 20s and 30s – were in what remained of the car, and were pronounced dead at the scene, CTV News reported.
The only survivor, a 25-year-old woman, was miraculously pulled out of the burning car by Harper and rushed to the hospital for life-threatening injuries.
Harper, who was driving on the boulevard early Thursday morning, saw flames ahead of him and happened to be equipped with a fire extinguisher – so he pulled over to help.
The only survivor, a 25-year-old woman, was miraculously pulled out of the burning car by a motorist before being rushed to the hospital for life-threatening injuries
Toronto Police and Fire officials noted that the Tesla’s battery cells most likely fueled the catastrophic fire which witnesses reported to have been 30 feet high
‘I took a few swings at the window, and I passed the bar onto the fella beside me, and he took a few swings, and then the window came out,’ Harper told CTV News.
‘And then it was good to see the young lady come out head first out of the window.’
But he didn’t know about the four others that were trapped inside. The surviving young woman didn’t offer any additional information immediately after her rescue.
‘There was panic in her eyes. Nobody asked her anything,’ Harper added. ‘She probably wouldn’t be able to talk. We just assumed it was a driver who was trapped, and without fire equipment, we couldn’t do anything for the driver.’
But the devastating outcome left him deeply upset, especially as he remembered the faint voices that echoed out of the engulfed car.
‘It was so muffled and so quiet and so weak,’ he added. ‘That’s what hurts, hearing a voice and then finding out later, a few hours later, people were in that car, and nobody knew. Nobody knew until the fire was out.’
Phillip Sinclair, a Duty Inspector, noted how the excessive speed of the car was most likely a factor of the collision
The collision was so severe that one of the batteries were ejected from the Tesla and had to be properly disposed of to avoid any further ignitions
‘If we had known there was somebody else, we would have tried to crawl in the window or grab somebody else, but it was dark inside the car. You couldn’t see in there.’
He left the scene a short time later – attempting to make space for emergency vehicles and fearing a possible lithium or electric explosion.
‘The haunting part is hearing a voice and knowing you can do nothing, waiting for the fire trucks to come and put that fire out and, you know, make people safe,’ Harper added.
Jim Jessop, the Deputy Chief of the Toronto Fire Department, said that an ‘exponential’ amount of water is needed to be able to stop vehicle fires, The Star reported.
Phillip Sinclair, a Duty Inspector, reported how the car’s high-speed was a probable factor in the crash, Free Press Journal reported.
Toronto Police and Fire officials also noted that the Tesla’s battery cells most likely fueled the catastrophic fire.
The collision was so severe that one of the batteries was ejected from the Tesla and later dumped in a sand-filled dumpster by emergency crews and taken to a dump yard for proper disposal – decreasing the risk of another combustion.
Chief Deputy Fire Chief, Jim Jessop, noted how vehicle fires take an ‘exponential amount of water’ to successfully extinguish
Police officers remained heavily saturated on the scene throughout the early morning hours, working alongside the Collision Reconstruction Unit to piece together what exactly happened, CTV News reported.
But it is still not clear where the group was headed, what caused the driver to lose control of the vehicle, or if the Tesla was a self-driving model.
Toronto Fire Services have increasingly been paying attention to lithium-ion battery packs, which are known to reignite even weeks after the initial fire.
‘This is something that certainly is going to be an evolving risk that Toronto Fire Service has been very proactive on in preparing for the future, Jim Jessop, the Deputy Fire Chief, told CTV.
‘But I want to be very clear; we have all attended collisions where we’ve had horrible car fires as well that are gasoline-powered. So I don’t want to suggest or comment until the investigation is complete.’
Sinclair noted that every angle will be looked at while investigating the tragedy.
‘Much as with any investigation, you work with the city partners to look at all the factors that could be involved, including the road service, environmental factors, to determine what factors are exactly involved, or what could have led to the collision,’ he said.
The City of Toronto made a statement to the family and friends of those affected while also wishing a full recovery to the woman who was gravely injured.
