Durham Regional Police have confirmed new details about a deadly wrong-way crash on Highway 401 which claimed the lives of a baby and his grandparents following a police chase in April.
The chase began with a robbery at an LCBO store near Green Road and Highway 2 in Bowmanville on the evening of April 30.
A police source previously confirmed to CP24 that an off-duty Durham police officer confronted a male suspect, who then brandished a knife.
In a report which came before the Durham Police Services Board at its last meeting, police confirmed that a suspect pulled a knife on the off-duty officer after the officer confronted him.
According to police, the off-duty officer also followed the suspect for a time after calling the Durham police communication centre to report the incident.
“The off-duty officer reported that the suspect departed in a U-Haul van traveling westbound on Regional Highway 2. The off- duty officer strategically followed the suspect vehicle and disengaged when officers in marked cruisers caught up to the suspect vehicle,” police say in a report to the board detailing various cases being probed by the province’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU).
The description of the incident also says that police briefly lost sight of the suspect vehicle.
“Officers lost sight of the vehicle, and a brief time later it was again located in Oshawa,” Durham police wrote. “The suspect vehicle struck a cruiser and entered eastbound Highway 401, traveling in the opposite direction of traffic. Officers re-engaged and pursued the suspect vehicle onto eastbound Highway 401, traveling westbound. The pursuit ended with the suspect vehicle being involved in a multi-vehicle head-on collision, resulting in 4 fatalities.”
The crash killed three members of a family travelling in a Nissan Sentra – 60-year-old Manivannan Srinivasapillai, his 55 year-old wife, Mahalakshmi Ananthakrishnan, and their three-month-old grandson, Aditya Vivaan.
The baby’s parents – Gokulnath Manivannan and Ashwitha Jawahar – were taken to hospital, but survived the crash.
The grandparents had been visiting from India to spend time with their new grandson.
The 21-year-old driver of the U-haul was pronounced dead at the scene. A 38-year-old man who was a passenger in the vehicle was seriously injured, but also survived.
In dispatch audio previously obtained by CTV News Toronto, an Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) officer is heard expressing concern that “someone’s going to get hurt” as Durham cruisers pursued the U-haul in the wrong direction on the busy highway.
The SIU continues to investigate the police chase and deadly crash.