Court hears of horrific scene as men killed by drunk driver
Family begged him not to get into car intoxicated
A Lillooet man whose drunk driving killed three people, including two cyclists, should receive a 12-year jail term, a prosecutor argued Monday.
In February, Samuel Michael Alec, 45, pleaded guilty to three counts of impaired driving causing death in connection with a collision near Pemberton in May 2015.
He ran head-on into cyclists Ross Chafe, 50, and Kelly Blunden, 53, while they were out on a training ride on Highway 99, about 25 kilometres north of Pemberton. The two Whistler men were killed, as was Paul Pierre, 52, a close friend of Alec and a passenger in the vehicle.
Before the accident, Alec, who has a lengthy driving record, had been engaged in a continuous binge of drinking while mourning the loss of a friend in Mount Currie.
His family, who had seen him intoxicated, told him not to drive his sister’s Cavalier back to Lillooet, but he refused to hand over the keys and got into the vehicle.
Near the crash scene and just before the fatal collision, one driver observed Alec approaching her quickly from behind, swerving into the oncoming lane, forcing her to step on her brakes and let him pass.
Alec narrowly missed hitting an oncoming motorcycle, which was forced onto the gravel shoulder.
Chafe, Blunden and Stewart Blaser were, meanwhile, riding their bikes southbound on the highway, with Blaser falling behind before Alec smashed into the two riders in front of Blaser.
As Blaser looked up, he saw his friends about 100 to 200 metres ahead of him, and suddenly heard the sound of a collision.
He rode into view of the accident scene, came to a stop and dismounted his bike. Seeing debris and recognizing body parts, he did not approach any further, said Crown counsel Grace Oh in describing the terrible scene.
In a victim-impact statement, Blaser said the fatal collision had “changed his life forever” and he’d lost two dear friends who had had a positive influence on him in more ways than one.
“I was there riding with my buddies,” he told Justice William Ehrcke. “All things being equal, I should probably be dead, too. The horrific sound I heard that day and the images in my mind will haunt me forever.”
Two doctors who were among the first to arrive at the scene found Chafe and Blunden lying in a ditch just north of Alec’s car. The two men had suffered fatal injuries. The doctors also found Pierre dead in the vehicle.
After the collision, Alec was seen getting out of the car and approaching a number of vehicles, asking for a ride to Pemberton. When one motorist told him there’d been an accident and police were being called, he said: “No police, no police.”
After getting into one motorist’s vehicle and then being told to leave, he was approached by a motorcyclist who told him to stay at the scene. Alec pushed off of the man and fled, saying: “You can’t prove I was driving the car.”
Following a struggle, Alec was brought to the ground and later arrested by cops before being taken by air ambulance to Vancouver General Hospital to be treated for the injuries he’d suffered.
Oh told the judge that Alec had a lengthy record that included seven criminal driving offences and numerous breaches of court orders. She said his aboriginal background included his parents attending residential schools and of Alec experiencing a childhood marked by neglect, abuse and violence.