Sentencing in fatal crash adjourned

The fate of a Binbrook farmer, who caused a fatal crash after he failed to secure a tractor boom as he drove down a dark country road more than two years ago, is now in the hands of a local judge.

Benjamin Klunder was driving a tractor with a lowered 31.5-footwide boom in West Lincoln on May 14, 2015, when the boom penetrated the driver’s side of an oncoming car.

The driver, Randall Moore, 55, of Fonthill, died instantly from blunt force trauma to the head.

Klunder, 26, appeared in an Ontario Court of Justice in St. Catharines on Thursday to be sentenced on a charge of dangerous driving causing death.

After hearing final summations from the Crown and defence, Judge Peter Wilkie adjourned the matter to June 2.

Assistant Crown attorney Rick Monette is seeking a jail term of nine months, while defence counsel Roger Yachetti argued a suspended sentence, or a short jail term to be served intermittently, was a more appropriate penalty against his client, a first-time offender.

More than 30 character reference letters have been filed with the court on Klunder’s behalf.

Yachetti said the letters describe Klunder as a responsible, hard-working young man “who exhibited, and continues to exhibit, great remorse in the death of Mr. Moore.”

Monette agreed that “but for this offence, he is of good character” but maintained a jail term was warranted.

He said the defendant is a trained operator of a commercial vehicle and should have taken proper steps to ensure the boom was in the proper position when he drove the “massive piece of machinery down a dark country road.”

Yachetti said his client was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the offence and described the incident was a “serious error of judgment.”

Klunder was driving a 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 22-foot-wide road at about 9:30 p.m.

It had already knocked out a mailbox and a road sign before Moore’s car was struck.

Klunder, who had worked a 16-hour day in the fields, didn’t stop after the collision.

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.