A 23-year-old London man is charged with impaired driving following a head-on crash between two vehicles that killed a woman who was a longtime carrier of The London Free Press.

The collision happened at the intersection of Sunningdale Road and Richmond Street Thursday at 3 a.m.

Police say a speeding SUV driving on Sunningdale collided with a burgundy Sunfire stopped at a red light.

The impact sent the Sunfire careening nearly 45 metres, leaving the road covered in debris.

Responding officers at first thought it was a single-vehicle crash because the car and the SUV came to rest so far apart, Sgt. Pat Corcoran said.

“A few moments later, a second vehicle was found to be involved,” he said.

Gloria Chivers, who has delivered The Free Presssince 1990, died at the scene.



Emergency workers remain at the scene of Sunningdale and Richmond streets Thursday morning. A driver of the burgundy Sunfire, a woman, was killed in the head-on crash. The driver of the other vehicle was not seriously injured and has since been taken into police custody. (MORRIS LAMONT, The London Free Press

Jinghao Zhou, 23, of London is charged with impaired driving causing death and dangerous driving causing death. Zhou was treated at hospital before being arrested.

According to MADD Canada, 58 per cent of fatal crashes involve impaired drivers.

Nearly 1,500 of Canada’s 2,546 road deaths in 2012 involved motorists with alcohol, drugs or both substances in their systems, the agency said in its 2015-2016 report.

Free Press delivery is contracted out. Chivers, 60, was beginning her deliveries at the time of the crash. She distributed papers from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. in the Thorndale area. Her husband has also been a carrier since 1990 in the Lucan area.

Chivers was among the longest-serving carriers of the paper and was known for her reliability, said Ann Ball of The Free Press.

It has been an especially deadly year on London roads. Eleven people, including three pedestrians, have died in collisions in 2016, up from seven the previous year.

dcarruthers@postmedia.com

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