The teenage passenger and victim in an apparent deliberate head-on collision raised nearly $12,000 in two days to help fund an urgent need to find housing for himself and his dog before he turns 19 next month.
The last words Brian* heard his mother say before she aimed their family sedan into oncoming traffic made him feel as if a few fast seconds were slowly ticking by like minutes. The 18-year-old wondered if his mother was playing a joke, then he considered jumping from the passenger side door, but instead he found himself watching as the airbag deployed in his face.
“We're going to heaven,” he remembered his mom say before she crossed the centre line on Knight Street and sped north towards East 41st Avenue.
Witnesses to the multiple-car collision on January 29 said Brian appeared stunned and in shock, naturally, but more alarmingly he was also accounting for his mother’s intent. “She tried to kill me,” witnesses remembered him say.
“At the last second, I felt I was going to die but I was oddly still very conscience of everything,” he said today. “I witnessed all the cars slowly collide into each other. I definitely heard the racial comments. The car next to us… I was screaming for help, and they brushed it off.
“I was pulled out of the car by a nice bystander and I was unable to move. My body was in shock, but I was still very calm. I could realize what was happening. I remember I was screaming that my mom tried to kill me. But I know it’s not her fault,” he told the Courier. “I know she was sick. She does care for me, she has always raised me with all her love.”
Brian was taken to the hospital for minor injuries and soon released into government care as a minor because, his mom, who was taken in a separate ambulance, was diagnosed with a mental illness and remains in hospital. He hasn’t seen her since.
He will not be living with her when she is released. Furthermore, she may face criminal charges for her role in the collision.
“They don’t think it’s safe for me to live with my mom,” said Brian, who is looking for dog-friendly housing for himself and Shiro, his American Eskimo. “I have to find a new apartment and be at school to be eligible for government funding.”
He described his mom otherwise as a hard-working and caring woman who had just recently tried to buy him a car. Throughout his childhood, however, she had been diagnosed with different illnesses, most recently bipolar disorder.
Confronted very quickly with very adult concerns he is trying to solve on his own, Brian started a GoFundMe campaign to help meet basic expenses but also to cover rent on an apartment, which he said he must move into as one of the requirements before turning 19 on April 16 in order to be eligible for on-going government support. He said he does not have the emotional support of his extended family, who live in the neighbourhood and briefly visited the house he shared with his mother, but he said they coolly indicated there would not be further financial support like there had been in the past.
He fears they blame him for his mother’s ongoing illness. “It’s been a tough few years,” he said. “I’ve felt alone, especially in this transition where my mom is not even my mom right now.”
Grieving, in shock, under pressure to address very serious complications, and reeling from a sense of abandonment, since the accident Brian also tried to commit suicide. Instead, he called police and they took him to a hospital. As a minor now in government care, he also has a social worker.
He said he is buoyed by his friends' company and support. He plays ultimate and coaches a junior team at Gladstone secondary and also holds down a job in retail.
He is applying to study kinesiology at Langara and is also interested in a culinary arts program at Vancouver Community College.
Humbled by the generosity of friends and strangers who have helped fund his personal campaign, Brian said he felt selfish for asking for financial support. He intends to use the money over “five or six or seven years” to help make ends meet as he pursues an education.
“I feel like this was too much attention. I feel it’s unfair,” he said. “Other people have it worse than me.”
Brian's GoFundMe campaign is here.
* The Courier is not using his last name in respect for his age.
Twitter: @MHStewart
