Mountie who killed boy in traffic accident fined $1,500
Officer delivers tearful apology to boy’s parents in Penticton court
Heavy sobs could be heard in a hallway at the Penticton courthouse Monday as an RCMP officer collapsed in the arms of a woman whose five-year-old son he killed while off duty.
“I think of him every day. I do. I do,” a tearful Const. Ace Stewart told Elizabeth McIntosh, whose son, James, died Sept. 15, 2015, when he was struck by Stewart’s truck while crossing Highway 97 at Green Mountain Road.
Following their embrace, Elizabeth showed Stewart a series of photos of James, a Grade 1 student at Holy Cross School, which she said she hoped would help the officer remember the boy as others do.
Outside the courthouse, however, Elizabeth stopped short of saying she has forgiven Stewart.
“I don’t know that that’s . . . . We’re doing the best that we can to move forward,” she told reporters while struggling to maintain her composure.
“I just want to say to parents: Hold your children. You never know if it will be the last time you see them. Take that extra attention with them. You will never regret too much.”
Stewart, a father of two who turns 49 today, was fined $1,500 after pleading guilty to the Motor Vehicle Act offence of driving without due care and attention.
The maximum penalty is a $2,000 fine and six months in jail, but Crown counsel Peter Juk said Stewart’s actions fell fall short of requiring the stiffest sentence.
“This is not the very worst driving, the very worst set of facts — notwithstanding these are the most tragic of consequences,” said Juk, a Vancouver-based special prosecutor.
Those consequences have devastated the McIntosh family.
Brian, who tried to revive his son at the scene of the accident, has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and is unable to return to work as a paramedic. He’s now battling cancer, treatment of which kept him from the courtroom Monday.
Elizabeth, also a paramedic, is therefore the family’s sole source of income and struggling to support Brian and surviving son Caleb, who also witnessed the accident and feels partly responsible for his brother’s death.
“We are all working hard to somehow overcome this unbearable break in our family and to somehow learn to live with the loss of James,” she said in her victim impact statement.
Stewart, too, is suffering, but managed to look directly at Elizabeth as he stood and delivered a tearful apology from the witness stand inside the courtroom, which was filled with supporters on both sides, including uniformed RCMP officers and paramedics.
“I often wish that God provided us with a golden ticket of life to use at any time to spare a loved one and to put yourself in their place,” Stewart said.
“Brian and Elizabeth, I would have handed my ticket in that day and exchanged my life for his.”
Defence counsel Neville McDougall said outside court his client twice has attempted gradual returns to work with the RCMP unit assigned to the Penticton Indian reserve, but has been unable to do so because of PTSD, for which he continues to undergo counselling.
“I don’t know if he’ll ever recover,” said McDougall.
According to an agreed statement of facts read out in court, Stewart, a decorated Mountie named 2005 police officer of the year in Richmond, B.C., finished work at 5 p.m. on the day in question and 15 minutes later was behind the wheel of his 2015 Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck.
As he turned right from Green Mountain Road onto southbound Highway 97 at a “normal and unremarkable speed,” Stewart hit James as the truck passed “through or near the crosswalk area.”
James, who was pushing his bike through the intersection, had been out for a walk along the Okanagan River channel with his father and brother, both of whom were halfway across the road when tragedy struck.
Brian instructed Stewart to call 911, which he did. Stewart can be heard on the recording sobbing and saying repeatedly, “I didn’t see him.”
“There is no evidence to suggest Const. Stewart had consumed drugs or alcohol,” notes the agreed statement of facts, which was based partly on a report from the Independent Investigations Office of B.C., which handles such police-involved incidents.
The statement does, however, suggest both the height of Stewart’s truck and poor design of the intersection contributed to the accident.
The truck had been fitted with a 10-centimetre lift kit that increased the size of the blind spots at the front and sides of the vehicle, making it particularly difficult to spot objects less than 1.25 metres in height; James was 1.19 metres tall.
As well, the button that pedestrians use to activate the crossing signal is mounted on a pole about four metres from the crosswalk itself, which prompted the family to cut diagonally across part of the roadway to get onto the crosswalk.
Nonetheless, while Judge James Threlfall said Stewart was clearly to blame for the crash, he also suggested such a “momentary lapse” in attention while driving can happen to anyone.
“Events such as these cause us all to pause and reflect on how life can be altered forever in a second,” said Threlfall.
The judge left it up to the B.C. Superintendent of Motor Vehicles to decide if Stewart should lose his driver’s licence temporarily.