Steep, slippery path along Charlottetown street slammed as hazard to pedestrians
CBC
A newcomer to Charlottetown who injured her ankle while walking to Walmart to drop off a job application is the latest person to call for safety improvements on the very slippery slope next to Buchanan Drive.
Yasmin Morgan-Johnson is now laid up in her third-floor apartment for six to eight weeks, with her damaged ankle in a cast, after the incident on a private road on Nov. 21.
"Not everybody can drive, and not everybody owns a vehicle," she said in an interview with CBC News.
"I think the persons who are responsible for that area should really put in some safety measures there."
Morgan-Johnson was initially walking on Buchanan Drive itself until a passing driver rolled down the window and told her she wasn't allowed to be in the way of cars.
She stepped off the pavement onto the grassy, muddy path between Sleep Country and Walmart, and continued on her way.
Near the bottom of the hill, she tripped on some loose rocks and fell forward, got up, and then slipped, falling hard on her ankle.
Three people stopped to help her and someone called an ambulance.
"While I was on the ground, someone else ... fell on the same hill," she said.
Morgan-Johnson's husband is a long distance truck driver who came to Canada three years ago. She joined him in October from Jamaica, where she had been employed as a residential care worker.
Now she is confined to her apartment, with crutches to help her get around, while her husband is away on a trucking job.
Morgan-Johnson's landlord Jon Zuccolo has been helping her as much as he can, picking her up from the hospital when she called him about her ankle, getting her some crutches and continuing to touch base with her.
"My husband had given me the landlord's number in case of emergency, so he came for me," Morgan-Johnson said.
Zuccolo was the person who reached out to CBC News after his tenant's injury. Before that, he contacted the City of Charlottetown and was told it was "private property, nothing to do with the city."
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