Paramedics replace ruined Halloween costume after Vancouver boy hit by truck

A 12-year-old boy on his way to school in a joker costume, was hit by a truck while crossing Marine Drive near Main Street on his bike Monday morning.

He had just left a grocery with a box of packaged potato chips that he planned to bring to his classroom’s Halloween party.

“A truck came very fast around the corner and hit me and my bike,” Harley Cochrane-Hoban told CTV News, who spoke to him while he was recovering at BC Children's Hospital

“I went into the trauma room and my brain was just going crazy. Am I going to have surgery? Am I going to have something bad happen to me?” he recalled.

Paramedics Lisa Salt and Quinn Gallacher said the boy was alert and talkative when they checked him over at the scene, and that’s a good sign.

But the team felt bad that they had to cut his joker costume off during the examination, so they went out and bought him a firefighter’s costume as a replacement – on their own dime.

“We felt it was the right thing to do,” said Salt. “We felt he needed a costume for Halloween.”

Gallacher also gave Harley a pin that paramedics wear on their collars.

“I thought I wasn’t going to celebrate Halloween this year,” Cochrane-Hoban said with a grin. “I thought I was just going to sit at home and watch Netflix all night.”

The elementary school student was obviously shaken, but wasn’t badly hurt.

Paramedics said this is just one reminder of why it's so important for drivers to keep an eye out for children, especially this time of year.