A Hay River resident is questioning police tactics after she said her truck was struck by another vehicle being pursued by RCMP in a high-speed chase.
Nicolinea Minakis said she was driving her daughter to school at around 8am on January 21 when another vehicle crashed into the side of her pickup truck.
Minakis said she was making a left turn from 102 Avenue onto the Hay River Highway when the truck, carrying Minakis and her 15-year-old daughter, was T-boned.
While some of that morning’s events aren’t clear in her memory, she said she didn’t remember hearing sirens before the crash.
She said her truck “went flying” and narrowly missed a pole by the side of the road.
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Her daughter “was OK but she was screaming, worried about me because my head was bleeding,” said Minakis.
“I was really damn near blacking out, like I had a really bad concussion, apparently, but I was just trying to get my daughter and just trying to get into a vehicle because I knew it was cold.”
Minakis said she was picked up in an ambulance that brought her to the Hay River Regional Health Centre, where she had two wounds on her head glued shut.
By 8pm that day, she said she was being airlifted to Yellowknife’s Stanton Territorial Hospital so she could get a CT scan, something for which the doctor in Yellowknife ultimately decided she didn’t qualify.
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Minakis said she was told there were no available beds, so she ended up spending the night in her partner’s bed. He was also at Stanton while being treated for complications related to cancer.
Now, Minakis says she’s at home caring for her two children on her own while she recovers.
She said she’s happy to be alive and grateful that her truck protected its two occupants from the brunt of the impact.
Family ‘shaken’
Minakis said she appreciates the work police do to keep her community safe, but believes that morning’s chase was ultimately counterproductive.
“I’m not happy that there was a high-speed police chase down here in Old Town, in a residential area,” said Minakis.
“I feel like they should have known families were going to be driving to school, so what are they doing down here, speeding around like that?”
Minakis said she primarily wants acknowledgement that her safety and that of her community matter to police.
In an email, she said the incident had left her and her family “physically and emotionally shaken.”
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Minakis said she’s grateful for her community and for her church, who have offered support in the days since the crash.
Cabin Radio approached RCMP on Thursday last week for comment about the incident.
In an email on Monday, an RCMP spokesperson acknowledged police have a file that relates to the event Minakis described.
However, RCMP said officers were still working on a more detailed response that could not be provided by the time of publication.
