Fine but no jail time for driver who struck and killed cyclist
‘It will be with me the rest of my days,’ Guy McPhee says about tragic evening
ONE FAMILY MAN is dead and another lives free but tormented with the knowledge that he killed him.
That was the brutal finality lingering Friday in court after the sentence was administered to Guy McPhee in the death of beloved teacher and cyclist Jay Keddy.
“It was one of the worst days of my life and it will be with me the rest of my days … I am truly sorry for your loss,” said McPhee, 57, who addressed Keddy’s family without prepared notes, calling him a “great man.”
He was convicted in July for careless driving.
On Friday, the Crown asked for 90 days of jail time and an 18-month driver ’s licence suspension for McPhee, who was driving his pickup truck when he struck Keddy on his bike.
Justice of the peace Eileen Walker, however, ruled he receive no time in custody, but instead the maximum $2,000 fine, a 120-day driver’s licence suspension and that he perform 120 hours of community service.
Moments after Walker announced the sentence, members of Keddy’s f amily walked briskly from the courtroom. He had three grown children.
“When I got up that morning, I didn’t
know it would be the last morning I would see him,” Ingrid Keddy, his wife, said in court, reading from her victim impact statement.
“My heart still aches and I am still angry … Sometimes I wake up and wonder if this is all just a bad dream, and that he will be right there beside me.”
It happened at about 5:30 p.m., Dec. 2, 2015. That day, Keddy stayed late at Prince of Wales Elementary School to cheer on the girls’ volleyball team playing in the city championship.
By the time he rode up the Claremont Access, it was about a half-hour past sunset, but not yet dark, with good visibility.
The Mountain access road was down to one lane due to construction.
Evidence presented i n court was that McPhee, driving his truck, was focused on changing out of the curb lane to take the West 5th exit, looking in his side mirror and performing a shoulder check, when he struck Keddy.
An investigation determined he was in the same lane as Keddy for between 15 and 21 seconds, about 300 metres, without, he testified, ever noticing him.
Keddy, 53, was wearing a helmet but was hit so hard his bike was destroyed and he was pronounced dead at the scene, suffering skull fractures, a severed brain stem, pelvic fractures and broken ribs.
McPhee’s lawyer, Dean Paquette, argued for leniency in sentencing, in part because of the real estate broker’s integrity and character that was described in letters submitted in court.
He also suggested that McPhee has already been punished, for example, from the blow- back on social media, by those who feel they “can be mean and vindictive with someone they don’t know …(McPhee) is not indifferent to the loss; he has suffered from it and did not intend to do it.”
He said the facts of the offence also did not warrant the maximum punishment; McPhee had done nothing unlawful in his driving, he said; no speeding (he was driving 49 to 59 km/h in a posted 70 km/h zone) or distracted behaviour.
Assistant Crown attorney Nancy Flynn said McPhee deleted two cellphone calls he made that evening, but if anything, Paquette told The Spectator outside court, the calls helped his client’s case: they were made well before, and after, the accident, proving that McPhee had not been on the phone when he hit Keddy.
Paquette said he has not yet assessed whether he will appeal McPhee’s careless driving conviction.
Flynn argued for a severe sentence in part for deterrence to warn drivers they need to be alert and pay attention to everyone on the road, including cyclists.
But Walker, the justice of the peace, suggested deterrence had been achieved thanks to extensive media coverage of the case.
Walker spoke of how random decisions and events conspired in the tragedy, and the “what ifs” involved: McPhee had made a lastminute decision to head to a store before heading home, altering his expected route.
As for Keddy, handmade condolence cards sent to his family by students in his kindergarten class, submitted in court, suggest the teacher’s legacy lives.
One card, signed by Morgan and Nita, reads: “He was a great man. He made us laugh and made coming to school fun … No matter what, he will always be in our hearts.”