Man jailed in fatal crash

It may have been accidental but it wasn’t an accident that claimed the life of a 56-year-old Fonthill man.

“There was no malicious intent,” Judge Peter Wilkie said Friday at the sentencing hearing of a Binbrook farmer who caused the fatal crash more than two years ago after he failed to secure a tractor boom as he drove down a dark country road.

“But, it was not an accident in the sense that it was a chance event. Mr. Moore’s death was the result of criminal conduct.”

Randall Moore died instantly on May 14, 2015 in West Lincoln when his car collided head-on with a 31.5-foot-wide hydraulic seeder extended from a tractor driven by Benjamin Klunder.

The force of the impact sheared the roof off the car. Moore died of blunt force trauma to his head and chest.

In an Ontario Court of Justice in St. Catharines on Friday, Klunder was sentenced to five months behind bars on a charge of dangerous driving causing death.

Klunder, 26, had worked almost 16 hours that day and had failed to raise the boom as he left a farmer’s field and started down the roadway.

The boom was stretched across the length of the oncoming lane.

It struck a mail box, shearing it in half, and then ripped a pole from the ground before Moore’s vehicle slammed into it.

“He could not see the extended arm of the seeder stretched across the road in front of him,” Wilkie said of the victim.

Klunder was not aware of the collision and continued down the country road.

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

Court was told Klunder was very apologetic and polite and offered to pay for the damaged mailbox.

“He was not aware of the tragic incident he had caused moments before,” the judge said.

The defendant was arrested in Smithville the following day.

While Klunder is a first-time offender and described as being a hardworking young man with a bright future, the judge said he committed an offence “with the most serious possible consequences.”

He said the victim’s family is “grief stricken to this day by the sudden and unnecessary loss of life.”

“There is no sentence that will make this right … that will undo the wrong,” he added.

Assistant Crown attorney Rick Monette had sought a jail term of nine months, while defence counsel Roger Yachetti had argued a suspended sentence, or a short jail term to be served intermittently, was a more appropriate penalty.

More than 30 character reference letters were filed with the court on Klunder’s behalf, including letters from his former teachers and a Boy Scout leader.

In addition to the jail sentence, Klunder was placed on probation for 12 months and ordered to perform 50 hours of community service.