Could Kourtney Khan’s life have been saved?
Realtor’s body discovered after 12 hours in Lyft back seat
The death of young realtor Kourtney Khan in the back seat of a Lyft has got to be the most tragic reason of which I can conceive to ensure Vehicles for Hire are clearly identified.
Khan went missing on November 1st, the same night Lyft driver Sukhdev Singh was sadly killed by a 17-year-old driver who plowed into Singh’s stopped Honda Civic. No one even knew Khan was in the back seat until her body was discovered 12 hours later.
“The driver of the vehicle, 31-year-old Sukhdev Singh, working a late shift for rideshare service Lyft, was pronounced dead at the scene,” inSauga News reported on November 8th. Singh leaves behind a wife and young daughter.
“The second victim, a passenger in the vehicle who was not discovered until 12 hours later in the backseat of the car at a police impound yard, has now been identified as 20-year-old Kourtney Khan, a realtor who worked out of Brampton and Mississauga.
“Khan’s body was only discovered when she was reported missing by family members later that day. A shared tracking device on her phone led police to the accident scene and then later to the impound area, where she was found in the backseat of the wreckage. It is not known if she was killed at the accident scene or succumbed to her injuries later.”
“Peel Regional Police originally did not acknowledge that Khan’s body was discovered hours after the crash, stating initially that one person had died, then later announcing the second death that turned out to be Khan,” iNsauga reporter Steve Pecar details.
“Police have since acknowledged that her body was discovered later when they followed up on the missing person report.”
The CBC reported that “Hours after the collision, police received reports of a missing 20-year-old woman whose last known location was confirmed through a shared tracking app as the crash site,” according to Peel Police constable Amanda Steenson.
“Officers simultaneously checked the crash scene and attended the impound yard to determine whether evidence of a passenger existed,” Steenson said.
“Officers closely examined the rear passenger compartment of the demolished Honda Civic and located the remains of the deceased woman embedded in the wreckage.”
In 2015, we were told that technology would make passengers safer, that these corporations could provide police with exact information on the names and locations of both drivers and passengers with every ride booked through the app.
However, it appears that Lyft didn’t even realize their driver didn’t complete the trip, was actually killed in the accident – and he had a passenger in the car with him that no one knew about? How does that happen?
(I have, in fact written Lyft to ask how that happens, and will publish their response if I receive one).
Never mind the technology that supposedly protects passengers who are trackable in the app; that whole concept went out the window last March when Dr. Julia Viscomi’s 5-year-old daughter went missing in an Uber, and Uber refused to provide Toronto Police with the driver’s number.
Instead, Kourtney Khan’s grief-stricken family was forced to file a missing person’s report, which is what motivated police to check the crushed car again.
And now, more horrifying to think about than anything else for that poor family, is the unanswerable question: was Kourtney alive when the car was towed to the impound lot?
Did she survive for some minutes or even some hours; might her life have been saved, had first responders known to check the back seat for a passenger?
Neither police, firefighters or ambulance at the scene of the November 1st accident realized the wrecked Honda Civic was a Vehicle for Hire, and that there might have been a paying passenger in the back seat.
I can’t state this for a fact, but I have to imagine that if the vehicle had been a Blue and White Taxi, or an orange and green Beck Taxi, or even just any colour vehicle with a roof dome, someone might have thought to check the back seat. Maybe. (I have called and written Peel Police to ask if this would be the policy or common practice, and I await their response).
Given a choice between relatively reliable order and absolute chaos, for some reason, our society is choosing absolute chaos.
Doug Ford’s “Better for People, Smarter for Business Act, 2020” saw Section 39 authority for regulating Vehicles for Hire downloaded to municipalities. Collingwood and Midland have both voted to de-regulate Taxis in their towns, and any number of small towns or large cities could vote to do the same in the future.
On Monday, I got to ask police at the launch of November Crime Prevention Month what they were doing to prepare for any avalanche of towns deciding to deregulate ground transportation, including the visual identifiers like paint jobs and roof lights which have denoted Vehicle for Hire for decades.
Are police ready for such deregulation? Are consumers, passengers, family members…is ANYONE ready for scenarios in which fleets of commercial/professional vehicles are indistinguishable from any others?
The answer was “no” in 2015. It has to be a much firmer “no” in 2025.
