Drunk driver who killed RCMP officer granted limited parole
A drunk driver who killed RCMP Const. Sarah Beckett in a crash has been granted limited day parole to attend alcohol abuse treatment, but a parole board member cautioned that the man still struggles with honesty.
Kenneth Fenton was handed a four-year prison sentence in July 2017. He told a Parole Board of Canada panel on Monday that driving drunk was the “most devastating choice” he had ever made.
“I have caused more pain than I can imagine with my selfish and arrogant behaviour,” he said. “It doesn’t seem fair that I’m here while an innocent mother cannot go home to her children.”
The two-member panel decided to allow him to attend a treatment centre to complete a 70-day program.
But the members turned down his request to move to a halfway house after treatment, instead requiring him to return to prison before they decide his next steps.
Beckett, a 32-year-old mother of two boys, had recently returned from maternity leave when she was killed in the Victoria suburb of Langford in April 2016.
A trial heard that Fenton, 29 at the time, was speeding away from another police cruiser that had just turned on its lights to pull him over. His pickup was travelling up to 90 km/h when it rammed Beckett’s cruiser at an intersection, the court heard.
The parole board heard that he had alcohol, cocaine and marijuana in his system at the time of the crash. Fenton said he was grieving the death of a childhood friend who had committed suicide.
In May 2016, Fenton was involved in another drunken crash in which he and a female passenger were injured. He received an 18-month sen- tence last July to be served at the same time as his ongoing sentence. Parole board member Catherine Dawson questioned why the “terrible” crash that killed Beckett wasn’t “enough of a wake-up call” for him to stop drinking.
Fenton replied that he went “off the deep end” after the collision that killed the young mother and started getting drunk every day.
Dawson said Fenton still struggles with being forthright. She noted that, at the start of the hearing, he said he was living with the mother of his child at the time of the fatal crash, but after being questioned, he admitted the two lived in separate homes.
“You have some work to do when it comes to telling the truth, being transparent and honest,” she said.
She also said she was concerned that he had an alcohol problem for 10 years before recognizing it.
The mother of his child repeatedly urged him to seek treatment, Fenton said, but he was in denial and hiding his drinking.