A Grieving Mother’s Plea: Be Bright at Night

 

By Bronwyn Scott
Published: July 2, 2013

It’s been just over a year since Roxanne McCall last saw her son, Dean McCall, alive.

A taxi struck the Grade 10 student at Howe Sound Secondary when he was on his way home from a friend’s house in Valleycliffe on April 21st, 2012, his mother said.

He died in hospital the next day. He was 15 years old.

The accident took place at a busy intersection on Highway 99, near Mamquam Road.

“He was wearing his earphones, dark clothing and no helmet,” said McCall. No charges were laid against the driver.

“It was an accident. The cab driver couldn’t see him,” she said.

A mere two weeks before his death, McCall had an argument with her son about cycling unsafely.

“He came in at about midnight. Black pants, black hoodie, black bike . . . . I even gave him a white hoodie to wear.  Wear this when you’re biking at night, please,” she would tell him.

But her entreaties fell on deaf ears.

Family and close friends have helped McCall come to terms with her loss, as well as the comfort of knowing that Dean’s organs saved other sick kids’ lives.

“We helped out some other families in children’s hospital that day,” she said. “That really helped me get through it.”

Looking back, if she had any faith in community services or the RCMP, she was quickly disillusioned.

“The police could have done more,” she said, explaining how it was her friend who took the initiative to clean the road when nobody else did.

“I got out of the car and I ran on the road, and there were his shoes and his hat.”

However, the support network she might have expected to help her through those difficult days never came through.

“[The police] did not offer me or my son’s father victim services,” said McCall, who believes that the gesture would have alleviated some of the family’s pain.

Dean’s father, she said, “took it really rough.”

While recognizing that her son should have made himself more visible at night, McCall believes that Squamish would benefit from some changes to promote safer riding.

“Since this is such a huge bike community, so to speak, I’d really like to see some more well lit areas to ride,” she said, adding that erecting barricades would also be a good idea.

In the past year, seeing kids without the proper biking gear is a painful reminder. “It stops my heart cold,” she said.

Her message is simple: “I just really want the kids to be aware and conscious, especially at night . . . be conscious of what you’re wearing.”