The sister of a young woman who had her limbs amputated after a car accident near Gatineau early on Christmas morning has set up a fundraising campaign.
Samantha Mongeon says her 18-year-old sibling Sabryna was driving alone from Luskville, in the Pontiac region, to join friends in Gatineau. Just after midnight, she lost control of her vehicle and slammed into a Hydro-Quebec pole.
Fearing the car would catch fire, Sabryna got out of the car but was electrocuted by some of the Hydro wires that fell around her.
Mongeon says her sister collapsed — an electrical current apparently shot through her hands and out one of her feet — and was unconscious for four hours before a passerby found her at around 6 a.m.
Sabryna was first taken to a nearby hospital, suffering from burns and frostbite, before being transferred to the burn unit at Montreal's CHUM hospital where she had to have her four limbs amputated.
The older Mongeon says she started the fundraiser so their mother can spend as much time as possible at her daughter's side. She says the hospital foundation only allows five days of lodgings for the families of patients.
Her crowdfunding page has so far raised $25,000.
Part of the proceeds will help pay the lodging bills for her mother, who's from the Outaouais region, to stay in Montreal to be by her daughter's side for the weeks or months she'll have to reamin in hospital.
-With files from The Canadian Press