‘He deserves to be in jail’
SYDNEY — Talia Forrest’s family is hopeful that the man accused in the 10-year-old girl’s hit-and-run death will be sentenced to jail.
On Tuesday, Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Kevin Coady heard the closing arguments from the Crown and defence in Colin Tweedie’s retrial on charges of impaired driving causing death, dangerous driving causing death and leaving the scene of an accident.
Tweedie, 32, was acquitted of those same charges in 2022 but the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal overturned that ruling and ordered a new trial.
Outside the courtroom, Forrest’s cousin Halen Williams said the family is looking for the “right justice” when Coady delivers his verdict on May 17.
“We hope (Tweedie) is found guilty on all charges and he gets jail time for what he’s done. He’s been living freely for four years and eight months now. He deserves to be in jail for what he’s done to Talia,” Williams, 24, said as she clutched a teddy bear made from a pair of Forrest’s favourite pyjamas.
Describing her younger cousin as “more of a sister,” Williams said she often babysat Talia and her brother.
“I watched her grow up since she was a little baby, right until she was 10 years old. She was full of life,” said Williams.
“She was just trying to enjoy her summer and unfortunately she passed away.”
Forrest died on the night of July 11, 2019, when she was struck by an SUV driven by Tweedie as she rode a bicycle with a friend on Black Rock Road in Big Bras d’or, Victoria County.
The Crown and defence previously reached an agreed statement of facts that there was a collision, that Forrest’s DNA was found on Tweedie’s vehicle, and that the vehicle left the scene.
Crown witnesses in the trial included the friend who was riding bicycles with Forrest, a neighbour whose surveillance camera showed the girls pedalling up the street moments before the crash, the woman who found Forrest’s body, the RCMP officers who responded to the scene, an RCMP forensic identification specialist and RCMP accident reconstructionist and the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy.
The defence did not call any witnesses during the course of the five-day trial.
In its closing statements on Tuesday, the Crown recapped how Forrest, who was from Sydney Mines, had spent the previous two nights at her friend’s house on Black Rock Road and had been planning to spend a third on the night the accident took place.
Earlier in the day, her friend’s mother took them on a day trip to Ingonish and they stopped for pizza on the way home. The mother was in the kitchen preparing to make candles while the girls played outside. She testified to last seeing the girls on the porch at 9:20 p.m. Without informing the woman, the girls rode two bicycles up Black Rock Road to the community mailboxes before crossing the street for the return trip. Forrest was struck and killed moments later at 9:42 p.m.
“They didn’t get far,” said Crown prosecutor Gerald Macdonald.
During the 2022 trial, Tweedie pleaded guilty to a charge of obstruction of justice for initially telling RCMP his girlfriend Beth Hart, the owner of the SUV, was driving and they had believed she’d hit a deer.
He later told officers he was the lone occupant and driver of the vehicle. Tweedie said although he didn’t see a deer, he assumed that’s what he’d struck because he’d seen one in the area days beforehand and his father had struck a deer months earlier. When asked by investigators why he didn’t stop, Tweedie said he decided to continue driving because he didn’t want to risk being stranded on the side of the road.
Part of the Crown’s closing arguments concerned the issue of whether Tweedie was wilfully blind in concluding he hit a deer and not stopping his vehicle to check and see what he had struck.
Defence lawyer Tony Mozvik told the court there is no legal requirement for a driver to stop their vehicle if they hit a deer. Mozvik also suggested the integrity of the scene was compromised and that much of the RCMP accident reconstructionist’s report was based on “double hearsay at best.”