Mourners at vigil for pedestrian killed on Elgin Street demand safer roads
Saloni Aitawadekar was hit by a pickup truck near a crosswalk at Elgin Street and Laurier Avenue W.
More than 100 people attended a vigil outside city hall on Friday evening, calling for safer roads in Ottawa after a pedestrian was killed at a nearby intersection earlier in the week.
Saloni Aitawadekar, 27, died after being struck by a pickup truck near a crosswalk at Elgin Street and Laurier Avenue W. on Monday.
Aitawadekar, who was a graduate of Algonquin College, worked nearby in marketing for the business management firm Accenture.
She stepped out of the office for a brief stroll to get a breath of air on Monday afternoon but never returned, her colleagues said.
Attending the vigil, colleague Cindy Merhi recalled Aitawadekar as a vibrant presence in the office who was excited to be building a life in Canada after emigrating from India.
"She had dreams; she had ambitions; she had goals; she wanted to buy a house," Merhi said.
Housemate Atri Dave said his friend was an only child who had been raised by a single mother. Since moving to Canada, Aitawadekar had been financially supporting her mother in Hyderabad.
"She used to send 15,000 Indian rupees [$240] to her mother every month and that's what she was surviving on. And now that support has been pulled out of her," Dave said, explaining that friends were fundraising to repatriate Aitawadekar's body and help her mother.
Aitawadekar had obtained her permanent residency earlier this year, Dave said, and had a boyfriend she planned to marry.
"The next stage for her was to acquire her citizenship," Dave said.
Intersection upgrades delayed
The vigil was organized by Marna Nightingale, who noted that plans to upgrade the intersection at Laurier and Elgin had been delayed for years, even after a cyclist was killed nearby in 2018.
"They had a chance to fix it when somebody was killed in the bike lane there," she said.
After plans to upgrade the intersection were delayed last year due to jurisdictional issues, work is scheduled to begin on a multimillion dollar revamp this summer.
"If it hadn't taken that extra year, she might not have died," Nightingale said.
Addressing the crowd, Somerset Councillor Ariel Troster reiterated a call for the city to commit to a "vision zero" strategy to eliminate traffic fatalities. The city's current road safety action plan aims to reduce traffic fatalities by 20 per cent annually.
"What is the acceptable number of deaths? No death is acceptable because of bad infrastructure," Troster said.
Following speeches, Aitawadekar's friends laid a pair of her shoes next to three "ghost bikes" outside city hall that represent cyclists who have been killed.
