Sentencing delayed in farm tractor death

Fonthill’s Randall Moore died in May 2015 collision

A Binbrook farmer who pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing death will have to wait to learn his fate after his sentencing hearing fell apart Wednesday.

Benjamin Klunder, 26, was driving a tractor down a roadway in West Lincoln on May 14, 2015, when he was involved in a fatal crash that claimed the life of Randall Moore, 55, of Fonthill.

Wednesday’s court proceedings came to a crashing halt after Judge Peter Wilkie directed some pointed questions to Klunder’s lawyer, Roger Yachetti. The questions were aimed at establishing the level of Klunder’s culpability in the collision.

At one point, Yachetti, his voice rising, threatened to withdraw his client’s guilty plea if the judge accepted that Klunder was “willfully negligent” instead of “negligent” in his operation of the tractor.

The judge gave Yachetti and assistant Crown attorney Richard Monette time to meet behind closed doors and agree on wording to clarify what exactly happened the night Moore died.

Minutes after the lawyers reentered the courtroom, Yachetti backed away from the jury-rigged agreement, and asked the judge for the adjournment until May 18 to straighten everything out.

Klunder is employed by a farmer in Smithville. He was driving a commercial John Deere tractor that was pulling an agricultural seeder.

The seeder has a boom that can be extended 31.5 feet at a height of three feet.

The boom was not locked in place as the tractor rumbled down the road at about 9:30 p.m. It had already knocked out a mailbox and a road sign when Moore’s car — a 2011 Buick eastbound on Regional Road 65 — was struck by the boom, which penetrated the driver’s side.

Moore died instantly from “blunt force trauma to the head.”

He was the only occupant in the vehicle. Klunder didn’t stop. West Lincoln firefighters, paramedics and Niagara Regional Police were called to the scene near Port Davidson Road after a report that a vehicle had left the roadway and entered a field.

Police located the tractor later at a farm in Smithville and Klunder was arrested.

A homeowner, unaware that a fatal collision had occurred, told police he had stopped the tractor and confronted the driver about the damaged mailbox.

Before the plea agreement, Klunder was charged with dangerous driving causing death and leaving the scene of an accident.

Wilkie said an understanding of what happened before the tractor entered the roadway is vital in determining a sentence.

The agreement needs to include whether a fatigued Klunder, who had worked a 16-hour day in the fields, left the cab but forgot to manually lock the boom with pins — or just retracted the boom hydraulically from the cab and drove onto the roadway without bothering to insert the pins.

“It is essential we do (understand) that,” Wilkie said.

The morning was spent with testimony from character witnesses for Klunder, including his wife Katherine, his mother, a coworker and a family friend who is a firefighter in Hamilton.

All presented Klunder as trustworthy, reliable, hard working and remorseful for Moore’s death. His mother said it was Klunder’s first encounter with the police, and he has struggled to come to terms with what happened.

Yachetti said Klunder’s presentencing report was one of the best he had seen in more than 50 years of practising law.