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An 83-year-old woman is in a serious condition in hospital after she was struck by a police van in Cockfosters. The Independent Police Complaints Commission is appealing for witnesses to the crash which happened at 4.40pm on Tuesday close to a traffic island near Hunter's Restaurant on Cockfosters Road, just north of the junction with Bramley Road. The elderly woman, who was a pedestrian, was taken to an east London hospital with serious injuries to both legs and her upper body. She is in a serious but stable condition. The marked Metropolitan police van had its blue lights and sirens on and was responding to a report of a separate collision in the area. Traffic had backed up along Cockfosters Road and it appears that the police van had moved to the other side of the road to get past the stationary traffic when the collision took place. The two police constables in the van were not injured. Scotland Yard referred the incident to the IPCC following an assessment. IPCC Commissioner for London Deborah Glass said: "This collision happened at a busy time of day when there would have been lots of people coming in and out of shops and traffic on the roads. We already have statements from independent witnesses but the more people who give us detail of what they saw, the better we are able to build up a full picture of what happened." IPCC investigators are also looking for CCTV of the incident, as well as examining police records and radio transmissions, initial statements of the officers involved and information from the van’s "black box” and mobile data terminal. Anybody who witnessed the incident is asked to contact the IPCC on 0800 096 9070 or email cockfostersroad@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk.
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