Behind the Wheel - When Drivers Kill
 

I've often thought to myself over the years that if I ever wanted to kill someone the best way to do it would be to drive over them. I would wait until I found them stepping into a crosswalk and make sure that I hit them while I was turning onto the street they were crossing. I would then screech to a halt, return and scream "Oh no, I didn't see them, I'm sorry!" If I planned it just right, I might get away with a traffic ticket and have my insurer pay the bills.

Of course I'm being facetious but the thought ran through my mind again this evening when I was watching the news. A road rage driver had run someone off the road and then returned and succeeded in driving over and killing one of the vehicle occupants after they had exited their vehicle and stood on the shoulder of the road. The question posed by someone close to the deceased was why hadn't the driver been charged with homicide?

The Criminal Code of Canada says that homicide occurs when someone directly or indirectly, by any means, causes the death of a human being. Homicide is not an offence unless it is culpable, meaning that the death is caused by an unlawful act, criminal negligence, causing someone to kill themselves by threats, fear of violence or deception or wilfully frightening them, in the case of a child or sick person.

Murder is culpable homicide where the person who causes the death of a human being means to cause his death or means to cause him bodily harm that he knows is likely to cause his death, and is reckless whether death ensues or not. However, murder may be reduced to manslaughter if the person who committed it did so in the heat of passion caused by sudden provocation.

The driver in this story was charged with criminal negligence in the operation of a motor vehicle causing death. The maximum penalty here is the same as it is for murder, life in prison. The main difference is the minimum sentence imposed by each of these offences. The choice of which charges to prefer belongs to Crown Counsel after looking at all the evidence in the context of current case law and having decided on whether there is a substantial possibility of conviction.

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The fact that the guy ran them off the road, and then proceeded to turn his vehicle back around and come back to run the person over should be grounds for second degree murder imo...how can it not be?

are you talking about the incident that happened in Langley about 8 months ago?

Probably. I'm not certain where it was, but it was a story on the Global TV news last night saying that a driver had finally been charged.

Congrats and good job the police for catching this SOB. I remember this and the outrage in the community at the time.

Berz out.

I wonder if the driver had any previous convictions or run ins with the law, or if he had a history of violence?

I always wonder this too, and now that I am retired can't check it...

You don't need to be - just watch the news. I don't remember exactly, I only sort of half-heard it, but it seems he DOES have a number of other traffic charges on his record.

As for the charge that was laid.... http://www.cknw.com/Channels/Reg/New...px?ID=1053658:

My understanding of the events that transpired are very different from what the news is reporting.

Apparently they passed him on double yellows, lost control of the vehicle, crashed, he turned around to see if they were ok, they started yelling at him and gesturing towards him so he drove off, and clipped one of the kids with a rack on the back of his truck. He didn't know this had happened, and when he saw the story on the news, he turned himself in.

This seems far more believable to me than what the news is reporting. This is nothing new though, every time I see a story on the news about some poor kid being attacked for no reason it turns out that the kid owed someone drug money or something, but that never gets reported. Bleh.

And now you know The Rest of the Story....

That could be, I know that we seldom get all the facts as investigators and the story is more often than not never fully reported on the news.

Well that's HIS story, anyway.

Didn't he JUST turn himself in recently? This story was all over the news for days when it first happened... if he turned himself in at that time, I don't remember hearing about it.

He was just charged recently, I dont recall seeing in the news anything about when he turned himself in.

Seems odd that you would turn yourself in 6 months+ after a crime, seems like the longer its bee the more likely it is you'd gotten away with it.

It's been nearly a year - the incident happened last March. Given all the media coverage at the time and the fact that the media was flooded with news about the truck they were hunting for, it's pretty hard to believe the guy didn't know at the time that they were looking for him...

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-col...e.html?ref=rss

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNew...0314/20080314/