‘Good Samaritan’ acquitted in 2017 highway fatality

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This article was published 04/07/2019 (2430 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg woman who stopped at the scene of a highway accident has been cleared of responsibility for a subsequent crash that killed a man she had been trying to help.

Michelle Trudeau was charged under the Highway Traffic Act with parking in a manner that created a hazard, following the Jan. 8, 2017, collision on the Trans-Canada Highway that killed 38-year-old Jeffrey Hunter.

“She was a Good Samaritan who stopped to help her fellow man,” provincial court Judge Cynthia Devine wrote in a recently released decision. “(It was) because of the action or inaction of another that Mr. Hunter was tragically struck and killed.”

Court heard at trial Hunter and two friends had been ice fishing on Shoal Lake and drinking beer when they decided in the early-morning hours to drive to Winnipeg. Hunter, who Devine described as being “very intoxicated,” was behind the wheel when the trio’s pickup truck went into the ditch.

Hunter crawled out the window and walked to the double-lane highway to flag a vehicle down. Trudeau — driving a pickup truck and towing a boat — spotted him, and pulled over to the right-hand lane.

Trudeau was still in her truck a short time later, when a semi crashed into the back of her boat trailer, then Hunter, crushing him. Hunter died instantly.

“I heard tires screeching and a big bang, and I realized Jeffrey was hit,” one of Hunter’s friends testified at trial.

Police photographs of the crash scene show the highway was clear of snow, but with snow visible on the shoulder. The highway ran straight for several kilometres in either direction of the crash scene.

A police collision report and dashboard camera video from the semi showed the truck driver didn’t notice Trudeau’s vehicle until a half-second before impact and didn’t apply his brakes until a quarter-second before impact. The semi had been travelling 92 km/h prior to the brakes being applied.

RCMP Corp. Kenneth Pinsent, a collision reconstructionist, testified the lights on Trudeau’s truck and boat tailer would have been visible between 200 metres and one km away.

Pinsent testified the semi driver could have stopped, but also suggested the collision may not have happened had Trudeau pulled over onto the highway’s shoulder.

However, “I am not satisfied that Ms. Trudeau could have safely pulled over to the shoulder,” Devine wrote. “Although I do not know his exact position on the highway when Ms. Trudeau stopped her truck, I can safely infer she stopped where she did to avoid hitting Mr. Hunter. I also find as a fact that snow on the shoulder of the highway could have prevented her from pulling over.”

Police questioned Trudeau at the scene, but she wasn’t charged until several months later. The semi driver was never charged in connection to the collision.

“It is obvious that if the (semi) driver had seen Ms. Trudeau’s well-lit and unobstructed truck, boat and trailer, he had time to stop before colliding with it or could have pulled into the passing lane to safely pass it,” Devine wrote.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca