Witnesses say they saw explosion of papers the day teen was killed walking to school
CORNER BROOK — An "explosion of papers" is what two men described seeing the morning Justin Hynes, 17, was struck and killed by a vehicle while walking to school in Cow Head on Sept. 11, 2017.
Andrew Keough and Bruce Payne testified in Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court in Corner Brook on Tuesday at the trial of the woman alleged to have been driving the Honda CRV that struck Hynes.
Neila Blanchard of Parsons Pond is charged with dangerous driving causing death.
Keough and Payne were shingling a roof and saw Hynes and his mother walking on Main Street.
Joyce Hynes was supposed to work with the men that day, and when she and her son stopped at the worksite, Justin, who had helped out the day before, was asked if he wanted to stay and work.
He chose to continue on to school at Long Range Academy.
Keough testified he never saw Justin after he left the worksite.
When he noticed the CRV, he said, it was going faster than it should have been.
Then came the explosion of papers, the contents of Justin’s backpack.
Keough said he got down from the roof as quickly as he could and ran to the accident scene.
Justin was lying there, not moving, and the papers were all over the road, Keough said.
“I couldn’t go up to him because I knew it wasn’t good.”
Keough said he saw the CRV keep driving and then stop and back up. He saw Blanchard only when she got out, he said, adding that she looked shocked.
Keough also said he saw tracks that he assumed were made by Blanchard’s CRV going off the road onto the shoulder and the grass near the town’s museum before the accident.
Payne testified that while he was on the roof he heard the sound of a motor revving and looked up to see who was going so fast through town. He said he saw the vehicle drive by the house they were working on and veer off the road as it went around a turn and “take out” a sign on the grass by the museum, and then he saw the explosion of a papers.
He got down from the roof and ran toward the scene.
He could see the vehicle, further up the road, stop and then back up, he said.
Payne said that when Blanchard got out, she said, “I wasn’t going fast,” and he replied, “Yeah, you were flying.”
He said Justin was lying on the side of the road.
“I couldn’t go over to the body,” he said.
Payne’s memory of the day, especially with regard to the position of the car off the road, was questioned under cross-examination by Blanchard’s lawyer, Jim Bennett.
Payne said his memory may be less now than it was back then, and even a year ago.
Bennett asked Payne that if he saw where Justin was, why he didn’t see the car strike him.
Payne replied that when it happened it was just an explosion of papers.
“I don’t know if the car got between my sight view of Justin or if I was just hoping that it was just his book bag I saw get hit,” he said when further pressed.