Walk honours Antoine Sutherland’s Memory

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This article was published 07/10/2024 (572 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

People lined up for minute-long hugs with the mother of Antoine Sutherland on Saturday, a year to the day after her 15-year-old son was struck by a car and killed in Brandon.

A group of over 100 took the same route home that her son had taken – from the basketball courts at Vincent Massey High School to a crosswalk on Victoria Avenue. It was a memorial walk for the young man, who was hit at that intersection and pronounced dead at the hospital.

“I know nothing’s going to bring him back,” said Antoine’s mother, Nicole Sutherland, at the crosswalk at the corner of McDiarmid Drive and Victoria Avenue. “He should have made it across but he didn’t.”

Memorial walk participants gathered around a light post wrapped in flowers at the crosswalk that stretches four lanes of the avenue. The post is a memorial for the 10th grader who died there on Oct. 5, 2023.

On that Thursday in 2023, Antoine was biking across the crosswalk when a car struck and killed him. Prabhjot Singh Grewal, 24, was later charged with one count of dangerous operation of a vehicle causing death last December. The case is still before the courts.

A year later, many in the crowd donned hoodies and shirts reading “Romans 8:18.” The Bible verse – advising readers that they will make it through their pain – that Antoine posted on TikTok a week before he was killed.

The group had started at Vincent Massey High School. There, Nicole announced that the family is working to have a memorial bench installed for Antoine, including a picture.

“For all you young boys who are playing basketball,” she said, “Antoine will be with you.”

Antoine had been playing basketball at the school courts and was cycling home when he was struck.

At Saturday’s event, a line of people waited, each hugging Nicole for a minute. One young woman told her that the last thing she talked about with Antoine was basketball tryouts.

The wind was gusting up to 90 km/h on Saturday and rain began to fall on the memorial event. People left the crosswalk and returned to the high school. Following the event, close friends and family gathered at the home of Nicole’s mother.

Pollice closed down intersection while the memorial walk took place around 1 p.m. At the intersection, Nicole looked to the sky, covered her face, and bawled.

The teen’s death prompted discussion at city council in October 2023, when Coun. Shaun Cameron (Ward 4) requested the city and province work to conduct a safety review in the area where Sutherland was killed, as Victoria Avenue is under provincial jurisdiction.

A safety review of the intersection in 2019 found that daily traffic counts at the intersection of Victoria Avenue and McDiarmid Drive saw approximately 18,000 vehicles and 780 pedestrians and recommended that a pedestrian corridor be installed at any intersection where traffic volume exceeds 9,000 vehicle movements.

A pedestrian corridor was installed at the McDiarmid Drive and Victoria Avenue intersection in 2022.

» cmcdowell@brandonsun.com, with files from Geena Mortfield

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