Article content

Even if nothing else had happened, least of all as is alleged here a murder, it was an encounter terrifyingly familiar in any busy big city like Toronto.

Surveillance video shows a man on a skateboard and a cab proceeding west along King Street East in the busy downtown core when, for no reason apparent on the snippet of video, the skater hit the taxi hood with his left hand and bent down, as if saying something to the cabbie.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Christie Blatchford: Video snippet catches terrifying, fatal encounter between skateboarder and taxi Back to video

Frankly, that’s probably enough right there to give any car driver, skater, cyclist or pedestrian a kick to the gut and a flood of adrenalin: This sort of aggressive interaction happens dozens, probably hundreds, of times a day in the chippy city.

But this time, as the video shows, the taxi suddenly lurched to the right and the skater, one arm raised a little, disappeared underneath the front right end of the cab.

The skater was Ralph Bissonnette, a 28-year-old chef (in his backpack were two pairs of striped “Chef’s Choice” pants and a black apron), originally from Quebec. He died from catastrophic crushing injuries.