Three young girls among crash victims

MELFORT, Sask.—A tiny town in central Saskatchewan has been devastated by a single-vehicle crash yesterday that claimed the lives of a woman and three little girls and has left two other girls in a coma.
The vehicle the woman was driving veered off a secondary highway near Melfort, Sask. and flipped over into a water-filled dugout.

Pauline Boyer, the mayor of St. Brieux, Sask., said she and her husband, Paul, believed the group had been travelling either to or from a children’s birthday party in Melfort, where young ones like to celebrate at the area’s only swimming pool.
Two of the children belonged to the woman driving; the other three were from different families in the small community, which has a population of about 500.
All of the children were seven or eight years old.
“It will affect most people in the community,” said Paul Boyer. One of the girls who died was the daughter of his wife’s cousin.
“One that’s in a coma is a daughter of a neighbour a few houses down. We know them all,” he noted.
“It’s very, very difficult on a lot of people,” he added. “It will basically shut down the community for a few days, especially around the funeral time.”
Pauline Boyer said the woman who had been driving the car owned the local hotel with her husband.
“I was at home this evening and one of my sister-in-laws came in and told me about it,” she said. “It was my niece, actually, that came upon the accident and had to identify the individuals there—and she works for them, so it was very tragic for her, as well.”
RCMP Sgt. Tammy Patterson said the car was travelling along Highway 41 when the car went off the road “for unknown reasons” and became submerged in the dugout.
The woman, one of her children, and two of the other girls died at the scene. The woman’s other daughter and another girl were airlifted to a hospital in Saskatoon.
The names of all involved are not being released until next of kin can be notified.
Police say they don’t know why the vehicle went off the road.
“We can’t really determine what the cause of the collision is at this time,” said Patterson. “Our reconstructionist is on the scene and he’s gathering all the information that he can, so that we can try and make a determination as to what happened.”
Pauline Boyer said the dugout where the car ended up is quite a distance from the road.
“We don’t understand how it could have happened,” she said. “We’re going to wait and find out what any autopsy or investigation can tell us.”
Patterson said weather and road conditions were good at the time of the crash.