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08/9/2005
Baby`s life saved by car seat

TRACY McLAUGHLIN Special to the Toronto Sun

BARRIE - A baby tucked safely in his car seat survived a horrific crash that left his mom in critical condition and killed the driver of an SUV headed the wrong way on Hwy. 400.

Mom April Sobisch, 30, of Alliston was ripped from her vehicle with the Jaws of Life and airlifted to Sunnybrook hospital after the head-on col-lision at 11 a.m. yesterday. The highway was closed for hours.

She knows 7-month-old Owen is okay, said sister-in-law Theresa Sobisch of Orillia. "It`s just amazing, it really is," she said last night.

"It just goes to show you that using child seats properly can save a life," Barrie OPP Const. Janet Small said. "In this case it worked - it saved this little guy`s life."

Police are stumped as to why George Labbe, 67, of Hunts-ville was heading in the wrong direction in his jeep Chero-kee when he crashed into the young mom`s southbound Pontiac Grande Prix near the Dunlop St. exit.

"A family friend saw it hap-pen and told us that he sud-denly made a U-turn right there in the middle of the highway before he crashed into April," Sobisch said tearfully.

"He was blowing his horn and flashing his lights but the man didn`t stop ... I thought, why? Are you out of your mind? Were you trying to commit suicide or what?" she said.

"We got a call at 10:59 from a witness who said a vehicle was going the wrong way and by 11 the crash happened," Const. Small said. "We are checking into the driver`s med-ical records to see what we can find."

Retired DJ

A friend who lives next door to Labbe said he is a retired disc jockey who loved garden-ing. "There is nothing you can say bad about George Labbe," Dorothy Shaw said. "He was a quiet man, a good neighbour and a good friend -he will be sorely missed."

April Sobisch was heading into surgery last night at Sunnybrook hospital. "Just about everything on her left side is broken," Sobisch said. "She remembers the roof being ripped off with the Jaws of Life, but she`s pret-ty much in shock. We believe there will be hours and hours

of surgery ... we are just re-lieved that the baby was in his car seat and that he is okay he`s absolutely fine." The woman`s spouse, Scott Eisses, was heading to Sunnybrook to be with her last night. In a bizarre twist, two simi-lar tragedies have happened on Hwy. 11 not far from yes-terday`s Hwy. 400 accident.

Police are still investigating why a 59-year-old Huntsville man who started his day Christmas shopping ended up careening down the highway in the wrong lane, killing him-self and another driver in a head-on collision last Decem-ber. Efforts were made to stop him, but Michael Blackley ig-nored police and drove 10 km before his own fiery death on Hwy. 11. Jeremy Boyer, 24, of Bracebridge was also killed in the ac-cident.

About six months earlier Cynthia Oster, 44, of Gravenburst sped south in the north-bound lane on Hwy. 11 and slammed into a van, killing herself and five other people.

Family and friends said Oster was suffering from depres-sion at the time and an inquest into the incident is set for Sept. 6 in Huntsville.