Chinese teenager fast, Vancouver police furious: wrecked Mercedes was doing 250km/h in a 50km/h zone
Yue Hui Wang returned from China to attend his Canadian citizenship ceremony - but was greeted at Vancouver’s airport with an arrest warrant over a high-speed smash that police called 'insanity'
PUBLISHED : Friday, 01 April, 2016, 6:49am
UPDATED : Friday, 01 April, 2016, 7:38am
fast. There’s too fast. Then there’s Yue Hui Wang fast.
According to the police account, the Chinese teen was driving a friend home through leafy suburban Westside Vancouver in a Mercedes-Benz registered to Wang’s parents around 3am last April 12. Despite the late hour, he was in a hurry.
Police say Wang’s car – a 476-horsepower AMG C63 coupe - was travelling at an incredible 250km/h in a 50km/h zone on Southwest Marine Drive, when it hurtled through an intersection on the wrong side of the road, then vanished into a large private property. The car was travelling so fast it took an hour to find the ruined black V8 sportscar in someone’s front yard after another motorist saw the roadside debris and a resident heard the smash.
When the investigators told me how fast he was travelling I honestly didn’t believe it
“We’re very lucky, I think, that we didn’t pull two dead bodies out of this vehicle,” said Vancouver Police Constable Brian Montague on Wednesday at a press conference to announce Wang’s recent arrest, labelling the teenage pair’s survival as “nothing more than a fluke”.
Wang was 18 at the time of the crash, which sent his 17-year-old passenger to intensive care with head trauma, brain swelling and broken bones. “The driver was relatively unharmed, believe it or not,” said Montague.
Wang returned to China while the investigation into the crash was under way and a warrant was put out for him; ironically, his recent airport arrest came when he returned to Vancouver to attend his Canadian citizenship ceremony.
Montague said he could not discuss the conversations that took place between police and the accused and his parents while Wang was in China “but you can’t not be aware that an investigation is going on when you are involved in a collision like this…whether or not he knew there was a warrant out for his arrest, that I am not sure.”
Montague added that Wang, now 19, had missed his citizenship ceremony.
The Crown approved charges of criminal negligence causing bodily harm, an unusually serious step in a case of speeding. Wang was freed pending his next court appearance but was forced to turn over his Chinese passport, and banned from the drivers’ seat of any vehicle.
The debris field and other forensics – including the length of skid marks and the vehicle’s electronic data recorders - suggested the car was travelling more than five times the speed limit, police said.
“When the investigators told me how fast he was travelling I honestly didn’t believe it,” he added, describing 250km/h as “nothing short of insanity”.
And so Wang joins the pantheon of a particular Vancouver fascination: Young Rich Men Doing Stupid Things in Expensive Cars. Bigots might think this something to do with theethnicity of the drivers, but it’s more likely a simple reflection of Vancouver’s reputed status as having the highest rate of supercar ownership in North America (despite having among the lowest incomes in Canada). Young men will always do stupid things in cars - but when the car in question is a Ferrari or Lamborghini, it’s more likely to trigger the outrage/envy switch.
Notoriously, a convoy of young men driving 13 supercars worth more than C$2 million were yanked off Vancouver’s Highway 99 in 2011 for street racing. A majority of the baby-faced drivers were on their N-plates, said police. Several were reportedly boarding students at Vancouver’s elite St George’s School, which issued a statement that did not deny the claims.
More tragic: the case of infamous street racer Kwok Kei Tang, a Hong Kong immigrant who was driving a Porsche at up to 200km/h when he struck and killed a pedestrian back in 2000.
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