Two women who lost their lives in a crash on the Coquihalla Highway (Hwy 5) late Friday night have been identified online.
Through separate GoFundMe campaigns, which have raised nearly $90,000 combined, the victims of the fatal crash were named as 27-year-old Utsukta Adhikari and 36-year-old Maduni Chathurda.
Adhikari is being remembered by Kamloops’ Nepalese community as a “bright student and humble human being” who recently completed her degree at Thompson Rivers University.
Bikash Bhandary, another member of the local Nepalese community, was seriously injured in the crash, the GoFundMe explains.
The fundraiser was co-created by the Nepalese Society of Kamloops and Shiv Shakti Temple Kamloops, and it’s raising money to send Adhikari’s body home and support Bhandary in his recovery.
Chathurda, originally from Sri Lanka, was identified through a separate GoFundMe created by her grieving husband Jayanga Wijesuriya.
After the fatal crash, Wijesuriya is left to raise the couple’s seven-year-old son on his own.
“I am shocked by this unexpected tragic incident,” he wrote in the fundraiser description, adding that he’s in a “helpless state” and needs financial support to “face the oncoming circumstances.”
Adhikari, Chathurda, Bhandary and one other Sri Lankan national were in a Hyundai Kona driving northbound on Hwy 5 when the collision happened just south of Kamloops shortly before 9 pm Friday.
Police have said that a Dodge Ram pickup truck, allegedly driven by an impaired driver, caused the crash because it was driving south in the northbound lanes of the highway.
The BC Highway Patrol (BCHP) is appealing for additional witnesses, including anyone with dash cam footage that shows the two vehicles driving in the lead-up to the crash, to come forward.
Anyone with information can contact the BCHP’s Kamloops branch at 250-828-3111 and quote file number 2025-3075.
