Jail term best option for dangerous driver: judge

Three people injured as chain reaction was set off that involved four vehicles

The only reasonable sentence for a man who slammed into the back of a truck at 113 km/h on a city street is a jail term, a Saskatoon judge says.

Queen’s Bench Justice Daryl Labach disagreed with the defence’s argument that Dustin Joseph Gordon Lalonde should serve a 90day intermittent jail term, which would allow him to keep his job.

“I am not convinced that (an intermittent sentence) would deter him or others from driving dangerously in the future,” Labach said before sentencing Lalonde to six months in jail.

Lalonde, 28, pleaded guilty last month to one count of dangerous driving causing bodily harm in connection with an incident on March 28, 2015. Court heard Lalonde’s quad-size truck was going 139 km/h just seconds before he rear-ended a truck full of people stopped at the intersection of 22nd Street and Avenue P.

The impact caused a chain reaction that damaged four vehicles and injured three people. Some victims said they are still dealing with neck and back pain as a result of the crash.

Lalonde had been drinking alcohol that night, but his initial charges of impaired driving and driving with a blood-alcohol content over .08 were withdrawn because of an issue with the way his blood samples were obtained, Crown prosecutor Michael Pilon said during last month’s sentencing arguments.

Pilon argued for a one-year jail term, but Labach ruled that length of sentence is usually reserved for more serious circumstances or for people who have committed other criminal driving offences.

Although Lalonde’s driver’s abstract includes prior incidents of stunting, speeding, driving without due care and attention and an at-fault rear-end collision, Labach disagreed with the Crown’s submission that the sentence should include a driving ban. Lalonde was on bail conditions that prohibited him from driving for the past year and a half, even though he hadn’t been convicted of a crime, Labach noted.

“For the court to further prohibit him from driving now that he has pled guilty would constitute excessive punishment,” he said, adding the fact that Lalonde will be suspended from driving for a period of time through SGI “is punishment enough.”

Labach did order Lalonde to provide a sample of his DNA to the national data bank, saying dangerous driving causing bodily harm is “a serious offence of significant gravity.”