A 53-year-old man is dead after a wheel fell off a truck on the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) Tuesday afternoon, striking two other vehicles and killing one of their drivers, police say.
Ontario Provincial Police Const. Rob Tihor said in a video posted to X at 1:12 p.m. both lanes of the highway will be closed for around four hours due to the investigation. They were still closed between Glendale Avenue and Niagara Street at about 3:20 p.m., with police saying at that time they would be closed for “several more hours.”
The collision happened at about 11:45 a.m., when the wheel came off a pickup truck in the Fort Erie-bound lanes east of Niagara Street in St. Catharines, Ont.
“The wheel travelled into the Toronto-bound lane, striking two vehicles,” said Tihor.
The male driver of one of the vehicles, who was from the United States, was pronounced dead at the scene, while their 52-year-old male passenger was moved to a local hospital with non-life threatening injuries, police posted on Twitter in the late afternoon. There were no injuries to the driver of the truck that lost the wheel, police said. Police made no mention of fines or charges.
After hitting the vehicle, the wheel bounced over the highway barrier and “into the city of St. Catharines,” police said in a second Twitter post in the mid-afternoon.
People travelling Fort Erie-bound will have to get off the highway at Niagara Street and take the ramp onto the highway just past Welland Avenue.
Those travelling Toronto-bound will have to exit at Glendale Avenue in Niagara-on-the-Lake and re-enter the QEW at Niagara Street, Tihor said.
