Sitting by Sheppard Ave. E., waiting for the driver who struck his daughter to return, Clayton Jones Sr. has watched person after person follow her footsteps, dashing across the wide, busy roadway to a bus stop.

Jones, who has been grieving the loss of his beloved Celeste, 34, since she died on the road Friday evening, has clung to the hope that the unidentified driver will return to tell him what happened. He has also grown angry at drivers for speeding along the straightaway, at the city for having no safe place to cross, and at the Toronto Transit Commission for putting a bus stop “in the middle of nowhere.”

“Whether it’s mothers pushing strollers, mothers with a baby on the hip or senior citizens, they walk (midblock) across Sheppard” near Abbotsfield Gate, he said. “Nobody walks to Warden or Pharmacy” — major avenues that are more than 800 metres apart — to cross Sheppard at an intersection and then walk back to the bus stop, he says.

“You have to play Frogger to cross,” his son Clayton Jr. chimed in, referring to the vintage video game where players guide frogs across a hazardous road. Sheppard is designed for vehicles, not people, they agree.

His dad continued: “We need to put something out to change the mindset of drivers. I see people stop for squirrels but somebody didn’t stop for a person? I was distraught but now I’m hurting and I want to find something that will change this situation.

“I want Celeste to be the last person killed at that (bus) stop. I want drivers to be more humane.”

Celeste Jones had walked from her nearby home and was headed, as she had most weeknights for more than 10 months, to the bus stop on the north side of Sheppard to get to her overnight inventory job at an LCBO store.

Fit and healthy, she made it about halfway across the roadway’s four lanes and centre turn lane. No witnesses have reported seeing her struck. Police have no description for the eastbound vehicle that hit her, except that it likely has damage to the front end.

A man told her dad he found Celeste face down and tried to administer CPR while his wife halted traffic. A woman more experienced in first aid took over but authorities pronounced her dead at the scene.

Celeste was a vibrant lover of books, film and television, the men said. Nervous about driving, she often took the TTC — “the red rocket goes everywhere I go,” she said — and cycled, sometimes from Scarborough to downtown, always with full safety gear.

Clayton Sr. has been overwhelmed by the generosity of residents who brought him tea, muffins and other treats at the scene.

“It’s unbelievable the generosity,” he said. “And yet the person who did this, who hit my daughter, has not come forward.”

They held a candlelit vigil to honour Celeste at the collision scene on Wednesday night and have started a gofundme campaign to help pay funeral and memorial expenses.

Midblock collisions are a frequent factor among the two dozen deaths of Toronto pedestrians so far this year, continuing an alarming spike in pedestrian and cyclist bloodshed.

While it’s often referred to as “jaywalking,” city bylaws say pedestrians can legally cross midblock when there is no crossing in the immediate area and they yield to oncoming traffic. No matter what the pedestrian does, drivers are obligated to take “all due care to avoid a collision.”

According to police data, 138 pedestrians were killed in midblock collisions between 2007 and 2018 while 497 were seriously injured.

Collisions outside crosswalks and signalled intersections accounted for more than a third of the 373 pedestrian deaths in that period, and one-fifth of the serious injuries. Most were on arterial roads, including six fatalities on Sheppard Ave.

“Sheppard is a killer, the speed that people go there,” said Councillor Jim Karygiannis, who represents the area and has spoken with Celeste’s family. He said he has asked city staff to look at putting traffic signals at the intersection of Sheppard and nearby Palmdale Dr.

Where Celeste Jones was killed

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He has also asked the TTC to remove the stop near Abbotsfield Gate. Karygiannis noted that in July, as part of a revamp of the “Vision Zero” safety plan that failed to curb road deaths and serious injuries, city council dropped the speed limit on that stretch of Sheppard from 60 km-h to 50 km-h, but the new signs are not yet in place.

Barbara Gray, the city’s general manager of transportation, said the signs should be up by November. A host of speed limits across Toronto are changing, she said, adding that sometimes new poles need to be installed.

Gray said a signalled intersection is planned for Palmdale and Sheppard as a result of a new development at 3260 Sheppard — a multi-building residential and retail cluster aimed at seniors — but could not say when it will be installed.

As part of “Vision Zero 2.0,” the city is co-ordinating with the TTC to have stops near crossings, she said, while also looking at putting new crossings near “desire lines” — enticements for pedestrians to cross midblock — and better lighting at such sites.

The Jones family, planning Celeste’s funeral, is trying to make her loss meaningful, to shake people out of acceptance that the loss of lives like hers is an acceptable part of city living and driving.

Said Clayton Jr.: “Our family’s mandate now is to do justice.”

With files from Ben Spurr