It was just before 11:30 a.m. yesterday when Roland Branko says a minor fender bender threw him into a high-speed chase that ended with his car teetering over a cliff and a second car in the Humber River about 20 metres below.
The 32-year-old boxer was stopped at The Queensway and Stephen Dr., east of Park Lawn Rd., when a car "tapped" him from behind. The car pulled up beside him and Branko gestured for the woman behind the wheel to pull over, but when she became hostile and appeared to reach for something on the floor, he decided to let that tap go, he said.
"I started driving away, she hits me again, again, three times," Branko said.
Speeds climbed toward 100 km/h in the 40 km/h zone as Branko raced up Stephen Dr., through a stop sign, with the woman's car following closely behind. New to the area, he didn't realize the street was a dead end that overlooked the river about a kilometre up from their starting point.
From Tim Follett's balcony, it looked like a car chase, "two cars zooming by, doing like 110 in a 40 (km/h zone)," Follett said.
Branko stopped at the end of the street and looked in his rear-view mirror, he said. The woman's car was fast approaching.
"Bam, she just hit me from behind," Branko said, recalling the seconds before his grey Chrysler flew to the right and came to a stop at the edge of the cliff. "In the corner of my eyes, I see her car, like in the movies, going down."
Expecting brakes, Follett instead heard "four big bangs," he said. "As I came down, I heard people coming back saying, 'One went right over.'"
Follett went down a back street to the boat launch across the river. The woman's car had disappeared beneath the surface, save for a tire poking through.
"Sure enough, a lady had crawled out of her car and ended up on a bank," Follett said. "I couldn't believe that she survived. That's a 60-foot drop."
After swimming to shore, the 25-year-old seriously injured woman allegedly told emergency crews she had been drinking.
While Branko said he was the victim of "one crazy person," police referred to her as one impaired person who, though under police guard in hospital, would be charged accordingly.
"We could have easily had two people killed here," Const. Hugh Smith said. "It is a road rage incident."
Branko dismissed the term.
"She was using her car as a weapon," he said. "You don't do that in road rage, you don't do that. It's worse. She tried to kill me."
TAMARA.CHERRY@SUNMEDIA.CA
