Bill Gerber walked past the cellphone lying in the snow several times before he picked it up.
In the aftermath of Saturday’s bus crash on the Coquihalla’s Okanagan Connector, Gerber and other passing motorists helped in whatever way they could.
Gerber, his wife Bonnie and their 18-year-old daughter Brooklyn handed out blankets and wrapped a woman’s bleeding hand with a towel. Gerber directed a police officer to a body lying still on the ground.
“I didn’t know what to do for some of the time,” he said Wednesday. “I couldn’t wrap my head around it.”
Eventually Gerber picked up the phone.
He began to search for its owner, but no one claimed it. After the last ambulance left, he dropped it in his pocket, thinking he’d look further the next day.
Word was beginning to get out about the Christmas Eve crash. Police would later confirm four people were killed when the westbound Ebus carrying 46 people, including the driver, rolled over at about 6 p.m. The survivors were transported to three Interior hospitals.
As Gerber and his family continued their slow, careful drive from Abbotsford to Kelowna that night, the phone in his pocket began to ring. It was a young man, asking after his girlfriend.
“My daughter … broke the news that there had been an accident and advised him to call the hospitals,” said Gerber.
The phone rang again a little later. This time it was a man, looking for his daughter. She’d phoned earlier to say her bus was running late.
The phone calls continued to come through the night as Gerber and his family settled in at his mother’s house in Kelowna. One at 11:30 p.m. and others at 1 a.m. and 3 a.m.
At 5 a.m., they learned that a police officer had come to the door of the family on the other end of the line with news that their daughter had died in the crash.
Returning to Abbotsford on Boxing Day, Gerber’s family stopped at the scene of the crash again. Frozen into the snow, they found two more phones, an iPad and two sets of keys. They collected them in hopes of finding their owners.
“A phone is like a wallet today. Pictures, contacts — it remembers what we can’t,” said Gerber. “If I lost mine, I’d want it back.”
Gerber took the phone he found to the young woman’s family this week.
“We were honoured to able to do that,” he said. “They wanted to know the story, to understand, so that it wasn’t just a blank.”
Now Gerber is trying to track down the owners of the other items.
Police have not named the deceased, pending notification of next of kin. On Tuesday, a cousin of one passenger confirmed the death of Karanjot Singh Sodhi.
The 41-year-old husband and father of two children, six and two years old, had come to Canada in September on a temporary work permit.
He was riding the bus from his chef’s job at an Oliver restaurant and winery to celebrate the New Year with his cousin, Kalwinder Singh of Surrey, and to complete a test for permanent residency. He planned to eventually immigrate to Canada with his family.
RCMP said icy road conditions were likely a factor in the crash.
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