Man gets eight months in jail after accident while driving drunk

There were tears from a 21-year-old man’s family in a Charlottetown courtroom Friday as a judge sentenced him to eight months in jail for drunk driving causing bodily harm.

Derrick Steven Dunn appeared before Justice James Gormley in P.E.I. Supreme Court for sentencing after previously entering a guilty plea to the 2018 offence.

A woman who was in court to support Dunn broke down and burst into tears after Gormley delivered the sentence that included a two-year driving ban and two years of probation.

During Friday’s proceedings, Crown attorney Jeff MacDonald told the court that on Oct. 13, 2018, at around 7:30 p.m. Dunn was driving through Mount Stewart in a truck when he hit a vehicle that had five people in it.

When the RCMP arrived, Dunn approached an officer and asked if everyone was OK.

MacDonald said Dunn appeared upset and told the police the accident was his fault.

On the way to the detachment, where Dunn gave breathalyzer samples that were above the legal limit, he expressed worry for the other vehicle’s occupants, MacDonald said.

The court heard two of the vehicle’s passengers were taken to hospital.

One victim’s injuries included two fractured vertebrae and fluid in her lungs.

Another victim had a concussion and whiplash.

MacDonald told the court Dunn didn’t have a criminal record, but his licence had been suspended once in the past for an incident related to alcohol.

A victim-impact statement MacDonald read in court talked about how the passengers with the most serious injuries continues to suffer financially and emotionally from injuries that still affect her.

The victim’s statement said she was upset, angry and scared.

“She can’t live her life as she used to,” MacDonald said.

Throughout the proceedings, Dunn sat hunched over and looking down at the defence table, at times wiping his eyes as a woman sitting in the public gallery behind him could be heard crying.

Dunn’s lawyer Conor Mullin read a letter his client wrote that said he believed he was fine to drive the night of the accident and wouldn’t have gotten behind the wheel if he had thought he was impaired.

In the letter, Dunn said it was the most upsetting night of his life, and he thinks about it every day.

“From the bottom of my heart I am sorry.”

It was a sentiment Dunn echoed when he addressed the court later in the proceedings, wiping tears from his eyes as his voice shook at times.

“I’m really sorry for what I caused and there’s really nothing else I can say,” he told the court.

Gormley told Dunn that had he not taken responsibility for his actions early and consistently his sentence would have been much higher.