In mid-February, just after her 5:30 p.m. class had finished, Sabina Barrett-Ryan trudged through the snow, making her way to parking lot 6 (P6). The third-year architecture student was walking towards her car, parked in the shadow of the lot, when she saw something in the corner of her eye.
“I saw in my peripherals this car stop, presumably to let me by, and then they hit the gas and slammed right into me,” Barrett-Ryan said.
She fell onto the hood of the car before falling onto the asphalt.
“I looked the driver right in the eye but she didn’t roll down the window or anything, she just proceeded to drive off,” she said.
Bruised and shocked, but with no broken bones, Barrett-Ryan managed to store the licence plate number on her phone before going to campus safety.
She said she can’t press charges because there is no camera coverage in the lot.
Campus safety removed the cameras between late May and early June 2013 to make way for the construction on the parking garage, according to campus safety community liaison officer Mark Hargreaves.
The construction project straddles the O-Train tracks between parking lots 6 and 7 on the north side of campus and should be finished this summer. The cameras are set to be reinstalled in August.
Hargreaves said while there are more than 800 working cameras on campus, including some leading up to P6, there are no working cameras in the lot.
“But it’s important to realize that a camera does not create security in an area,” he said.
Even without the cameras, Hargreaves said campus safety has not seen an increase in incidents in the parking lot compared to last year.
However, he said students should continue to take safety precautions as they normally would.
Barrett-Ryan said not having cameras is an issue because students were never informed they would be taken down.
She said she can’t press charges, even though Ottawa Police tracked down the hit-and-run culprit using the licence plate number, because there was no video footage and no one has come forward as a witness.
“Something didn’t click. She admitted guilt but I can’t charge her . . . she shouldn’t get away scot free with this,” Barrett-Ryan said.
Though she couldn’t drive for a week due to pain, she said the incident could have been worse.
“People could be attacked, people could be sexually assaulted. Parking lots are pretty dangerous places,” she said.
The designated safe paths on campus only run up to P6 and do not actually go into it, meaning there is no requirement for increased video surveillance.
Hargreaves said officers routinely patrol the area and he has seen “no increased risk in the area.”
“Lot 6 continues to be a safe area for students to travel through,” he said.
