Impaired driver who injured his passengers sent to jail

Two people hurt in collision on Warman Road

Police officers who responded to a crash in Saskatoon’s north end found Colten Joshua Longman sitting in the driver’s seat of a vehicle, stunned and smelling of alcohol and marijuana.

They also found one of his passengers unconscious in the back seat.

Longman had a blood-alcohol level of .14 when he gave a breath sample about an hour after the crash on Nov. 7, 2015, Crown prosecutor Frank Impey said during Longman’s sentencing hearing in Saskatoon provincial court.

Officers later learned that a vehicle heading northbound on Warman Road had T-boned Longman’s vehicle after he made an improper left turn from Assiniboine Drive.

Two of his passengers were injured; a woman had a deep laceration across her knee and a man was left with rib and pelvic fractures.

No one in the other vehicle was hurt.

Longman, 27, pleaded guilty to a single charge of causing bodily harm while driving with a blood-alcohol level over the legal limit. The charge was combined to include both victims, and charges of impaired driving causing bodily harm were stayed at the conclusion of sentencing.

On Wednesday, he was sentenced to six months in jail after Judge Barry Singer accepted a joint submission from the Crown and defence. Longman is also prohibited from driving for one year after his release from custody.

In proposing the sentence, Impey said it’s on the low end of the range considering the nature of the injuries, but added that Longman’s desire to plead guilty and his lack of a prior criminal record was taken into consideration.

Speaking to the judge, Longman said he learned his lesson and is relieved no one was critically injured.

Singer referenced a drunk driving case he presided over last summer, when he sentenced Catherine McKay to 10 years in prison for killing four people in a crash just north of Saskatoon.

He suggested to Longman that like McKay, he probably didn’t think what he was doing was dangerous. Longman agreed.

The thing about drinking is, “You don’t know how it affects your driving,” Singer said.

Impey cited SGI statistics that tallied nearly 1,200 drunk driving collisions in 2015, or about 100 every month. Those crashes injured 565 people and killed 54.