Friends, family want to piece together accident victim’s final hours
Shiho Ninomiya was an excellent skier, a promising student, and a good friend who is missed by many.
The 23-year-old Japanese student was stuck and killed by a car early Christmas morning on Highway 99 during a snow storm. She appears to have been walking on the road at the time, and according to the RCMP she was in the travel portion of the highway when the accident occurred.
For her friends and family, the only thing about this tragedy that is clear is that Shiho should never have been there in the first place. She was too cautious and sensible to walk on the highway at night, even if the buses had stopped running and cabs were hard to come by.
Now friends and family want to know why she was there, and what happened in the hour and almost 45 minutes between the time she left her friends, at approximately 2:30 a.m., and when the RCMP were called at 4:13 a.m.
A group of four or five unidentified males in a silver Isuzu Rodeo may be the last people to see her that evening, and may have the answer to those questions.
"Her home-stay family knew her as someone who was very responsible, and felt it was very out of character that she did not come back on the last bus," said Lisa Matsumoto, the supervisor of the Canadian Sports Business Academy, where Shiho was enrolled.
Matsumoto and Shiro Nakajima, the director of the CSBA, are working to piece together the events of the evening to help bring closure to Shiho’s family and friends.
According to Matsumoto, Shiho and a group of other Japanese students went out to dinner on Christmas Eve, then went dancing at a local night club. They were drinking, but the students said she Shiho was not drunk when she left.
"She studied very hard, and didn’t drink that much. She had a lot of common sense," said Matsumoto.
After dancing, the group went to a bus stop where they were informed that the last bus to Emerald Estates, where Shiho’s homestay family resides, had already left. Most of the other students lived closer to town, but stayed with Shiho while she weighed her alternatives.
While they were standing there, a silver Isuzu Rodeo with four or five males pulled up and initiated a conversation with the group. The males were described as young, probably in their early 20s, and of Indo-Canadian descent. They said they were going to Emerald Estates and would take Shiho home.
"They were greeting each other, saying ‘Merry Christmas’ and talking, and they offered a ride to Emerald. She was a little concerned, but after consulting with her friends she got into the car," said Matsumoto.
Her friends were concerned when the car drove the wrong way down Lorimer Road. They attempted to contact Shiho on her cell phone but could not get through. When Shiho’s possessions were searched after the accident, the RCMP discovered that her cell phone had a low battery.
The accident occurred just north of Alpine Meadows, near the Alpine Way intersection. She was wearing a dark jacket and skirt, and police believe the snow and road conditions made it difficult to see her.
The driver of the car involved in the accident and passers-by attempted to provide first aid to Shiho, and emergency crews from the Whistler Fire Department and B.C. Ambulance were at the site within 10 minutes. She was rushed to the Whistler Health Care Centre, but succumbed to her injuries.
The cause of death is not known, but she had a ruptured aorta, damaged lungs and a serious head injury.
The police do not suspect any foul play, and no criminal or Provincial Motor Vehicle Act charges were filed.
Matsumoto is asking that anyone from the silver Isuzu Rodeo, or anyone who might have passed Shiho along the highway that night, contact the school at 604-932-0404. The school is also interested to hear more about the weather and road conditions at the time of the accident.
"We are not conducting our own investigation, we just want to find out what happened that night so we can help her family and friends with what happened. We want to come to terms with why she was walking on the highway," said Matsumoto.
"The hardest thing for the parents was that they remembered Whistler as a good place. Now they have bad memories, and we want to erase that."
Shiho’s parents flew into town on Boxing Day to bring her back home. On Dec. 27 they held a small ceremony at a Squamish funeral home for friends. They left on the following day.
Shiho was enrolled in a course at the school that would enable her to improve on her English while becoming a Canadian Ski Instructors Alliance certified instructor. She was in the school’s six-month winter program, and would have been in class until April. After she graduated, she wanted to become a ski guide and instructor in Europe.
"She was an excellent skier, and she wanted skiing to be her career," explained Matsumoto.
Shiho was a university graduate, and her English was fairly good.
She was the hardest working student in the group, and although she had only been in Whistler since November she was popular among the other students.
"To everybody this came as a huge shock, especially because she was one of the most studious, well-liked people in the school," said Matsumoto.
Some of her friends have contacted counsellors through the RCMP’s Victim’s Services program to help them with their grief.
When the school starts up again on Jan. 6, the faculty will discuss the accident with the students and come up with some guidelines to prevent anything like this from happening in the future.
In addition, the driver of the vehicle which collided with Shiho and the RCMP are using the incident to put forward a proposal for a lighted Valley Trail north of the village that could be maintained by snowplows – Shiho wasn’t the only person spotted on the highway during the snowstorm.
For their part, the RCMP are treating the incident as an unfortunate incident that was complicated by winter road and weather conditions. The investigation is still ongoing, however, and they are awaiting the results of toxicology report to determine if alcohol consumption was a factor in the accident.
"This is a sad reminder for people to dress properly and to walk off the travel part of the road," said Sergeant Norm McPhail of the Whistler/Pemberton RCMP detachment.
"When there are storm conditions, people need to make arrangements to get home in the safest manner possible, make organized plans so they don’t wind up in the middle of a snow storm walking down the highway. It’s really very unfortunate and very sad."
