Three-year-old Kilaya Singh’s big brown eyes stare from photos with the innocence of youth.
Kilaya and her five-year-old sister, Nayoki, were best friends, hardly ever apart. The girls were the pride and joy of their parents, Naomi and Kreuger Singh, Saltspring Island residents for eight years.
On Tuesday, as Naomi was driving the girls home from school, her sedan went into a spin just as an oncoming van rounded a sharp bend.
The commercial van, driven by a 43-year-old Saltspring man, struck the rear of the careening sedan with such force that people inside nearby homes heard the impact.
Kilaya was airlifted to B.C. Children’s Hospital, where she died hours later. Nayoki and Naomi were taken to Victoria General Hospital.
On Thursday, Nayoki was released. Naomi remains hospitalized in serious condition, with Kreuger at her bedside.
“It’s heartbreaking,” said Michael Contardi, a friend of the Singh family.
He also knows the driver of the van, who was shaken but unhurt in the crash.
“He has young children as well, so it’s got to be hard, knowing you were a participant in that,” Contardi said.
Kilaya was “shy, like a lot of young girls are at that age, but she was just a bright light,” Contardi said. “She and her sister, you’d almost think they were twins. They were always together.”
Kreuger, a computer programmer, works from home, while Naomi has a catering company specializing in Indian food.
“She makes the most incredible Indian food on Saltspring,” Contardi said.
“They’re really great people for bringing community together. They had a lot of pot lucks and food was a really big part of that.”
Contardi runs Sharespring, a crowd-sourcing fund that focuses on local causes. After the crash, he set up an account for the Singh family. By 6:30 p.m. Thursday, 208 people had donated $15,614.
The Ganges branch of Island Savings Credit Union was busy Thursday with people wanting to donate to another trust fund, manager Donna Robinson said. “Being a small community, when tragedy strikes here, no matter what it is, everybody pulls together.”
Donations to the Singh Family trust fund can be made at any Island Savings branch. The amount raised so far for that fund was not immediately available.
Plans are underway for a vigil to be held on Saltspring this evening.
Contardi also plans to set up a crowd-sourcing fund to help the van driver.
