4 dead, woman seriously injured in fiery electric vehicle crash in Toronto

Four people are dead, and one woman suffered serious injuries following a single-vehicle crash in Toronto that saw an electric vehicle (EV) strike a guardrail and burst into flames upon impact.

Toronto Police Service officers were notified of a crash just after midnight Thursday in the Lake Shore Boulevard East and Cherry Street area.

Police tell 680 NewsRadio it appears the Tesla driver was travelling eastbound at a high rate of speed when they lost control and crashed into the guardrail hard enough that the EV’s battery burst into flames.

The EV quickly caught fire, and four people, including the driver, were pronounced dead at the scene.

Bystanders managed to pull a female passenger out of the vehicle. She was transported to a local hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries and is expected to make a full recovery.

Rick, a Canada Post driver, was among the bystanders who helped rescue the woman from the vehicle.

“I pulled up to there, I stopped, got out my fire extinguisher and gave that to somebody, told them to use it. Somebody was screaming they needed a bar because these four or five guys were pounding against the window with their hands.”

He said he grabbed a bar out of his truck, took a few swings before handing it to someone else. “He finished the window and the girl came right out, they grabbed her and pulled her out right away and she walked away from the car, and then sat on the ground,” shared Rick.

Rick said they didn’t know how many people were in the vehicle at the time. “Nobody knew there were four other people in that car until the report this morning.”

Traffic Services acknowledged that everyone involved in the crash was an adult, but they couldn’t confirm their ages.

Toronto Fire Services said this was a fully engulfed car fire, which was put out quickly. The exact cause is being investigated.

“The volume of water required to safely extinguish an electrical vehicle fire is exponentially greater than a typical car fire with gasoline,” said Deputy Fire Chief Jim Jessop.

Jessop said one of the batteries from the car was ejected due to the force of the crash which required extra care in retrieving and removing it from the scene.

“One of the concerns that we do have with these types of issues is thermal runaway and the fact that these can reignite weeks and weeks later.”

Rick told CityNews he was concerned with the response times by emergency services, adding the car was already on fire when he arrived.

“I don’t know if there’s a way to trace who made that call last night. I’d be curious to talk to them to see how long they had to wait to get through because that car was engulfed and nobody was coming. I was there for five minutes after.”

Lake Shore Boulevard is closed from Cherry Street to the Don Valley Parkway (DVP).