Two men were taken to hospital Tuesday evening after an SUV backed into a barber shop in Ottawa's Vanier neighbourhood, striking both of them.
What happened
An SUV backed into CuTzz Barber Salon, hitting two men who were in or around the business at the time. The call came in around 5:40 p.m. on Tuesday, September 22. No one inside the SUV was injured.
According to an Ottawa Paramedic Service spokesperson, one adult male suffered life-threatening injuries, and the critically injured man required resuscitation while being transported to hospital. A second man was in stable condition in hospital with serious injuries.
The barber salon sits on the main level of a two-storey building, and the impact left the front entrance area severely caved in from the blow it received.
Road closed for hours
The crash forced the closure of McArthur Avenue to both vehicles and pedestrians in both directions, between Olmstead Street to the east and Cyr Avenue to the west. More than a half-dozen emergency services vehicles remained at the scene as crews responded.
The Ottawa angle
Vanier is one of Ottawa's older, tightly knit neighbourhoods, home to a strip of small, independently run businesses along McArthur Avenue, including barber shops, cafes and family-owned shops that residents rely on day to day. A crash severe enough to cave in a storefront and shut down a stretch of the avenue for hours is the kind of disruption that ripples through a community where people know their local barber by name. For Vanier residents and anyone who uses McArthur Avenue as a route through the east end, Tuesday evening's closure would have meant detours and delays during the dinner-hour rush, on top of the shock of a serious crash unfolding in the middle of a commercial strip.
The extent of the damage to the building's entrance also raises immediate questions for the business itself and its neighbours about how quickly CuTzz Barber Salon, and the building it operates out of, can reopen and repair.
What we don't know yet
It has not been announced what led the SUV to back into the building, whether the driver has been identified, or whether any charges are being considered. The current condition of either injured man beyond Tuesday evening's reports has also not been released. Ottown will update this story as more details become available from Ottawa police or paramedics.
For now, the message from emergency crews is one of a serious, fast-moving scene: a vehicle striking two men outside a neighbourhood business, a badly damaged storefront, and a stretch of one of Vanier's main streets shut down while first responders worked to stabilize the injured and secure the area.
Sources: Ottawa Citizen
