Four people were killed – and one person was saved by a passerby – after their Tesla burst into flames after crashing into a road pole.

The incident happened around 12:10 a.m. local time when an electric vehicle carrying “five occupants” was “going at a high rate of speed,” Toronto police duty inspector Phillip Sinclair told a news conference. press, according to a press release. CBC News.

2024 Tesla lost control and hit a guardrail and concrete pillar, police said in a press release. Upon impact, the vehicle caught fire. Three men aged 26, 29 and 32, as well as a 30-year-old woman, were pronounced dead at the scene, while a 25-year-old woman was taken to hospital with “non-life-threatening injuries”. danger,” according to the police. said.

Sinclair noted in his news conference that no other vehicles were involved in the crash and that an investigation into what happened is “ongoing.” Deputy Fire Chief Jim Jessop added that they are looking into the possibility that the “intensity of the fire” was related to the “battery cells” in the car, according to CBC News.

Tesla did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

Sinclair said CTV News that the sole survivor of the crash was rescued by a “bystander” — eventually identified as 73-year-old Canada Post worker Rick Harper — who “rendered assistance” at the crash site around in which “the fire started”.

“Thank you very much to that viewer,” Sinclair said. “I spoke to them and obviously they too (are) deeply affected by this incident, a very horrific scene for that bystander to intervene.”

Harper told CBC News and for Toronto Star that when he came upon the accident, there were others already gathered outside the vehicle banging on the rear passenger window as they could not open the doors. He recalled to CBC News: “Then someone called out, ‘Do you have a bar?’ Do you have a bar? There’s someone there.” ”

Harper told CBC News that he managed to grab a bar he had from his truck and “swinged” at the back window before handing it to another bystander who successfully broke it and pulled a woman from on the back seat.

“He came out fast, headfirst. She didn’t say anything,” he recalled Toronto Star. “There were no words from anyone. I could see the fear in her eyes. She was making little screams.”

“You could see the fear in her eyes. You could see the anguish,” he told CBC News, adding, “And nobody at the time thought there was anyone else in the car. No indication.”

He noted at the outlet that he got back in the car and went to work after the rescue. It wasn’t until some time on the job that he finally understood the magnitude of the tragedy.

“I was totally shocked. It really hit me when I saw the news report that four died,” he said, adding that he had “spoken to several detectives” who told him the girl he saved was “recovering in the hospital.”