‘I heard the bang and saw a cloud of smoke’: Officer

Impaired driving causing bodily harm trial opens; Niagara Falls woman was without vital signs at scene of crash

A veteran Niagara Regional Police officer who has investigated hundreds of collisions said he has never seen anything like it.

The force of impact between a 2005 Nissan Frontier pickup truck driven by Ryan Dick completely severed the rear passenger compartment and trunk of the 2006 Pontiac Pursuit operated by Romy Lam, 61, of Niagara Falls.

The crash on Aug. 29, 2013, split Lam’s car in half and, sent the rear end flying into a field along Stanley Avenue, said Det. Jeff Inch of the NRP collision reconstruction unit.

The first officer on the scene, Const. Mark Dugan, testified Lam was without vital signs when he arrived and reached into what was left of her car.

Dick, who was 24 at the time of the crash, is on trial for impaired driving causing bodily harm, dangerous driving causing bodily harm and driving with greater than 80 mg of alcohol in 100 ml of blood.

The trial is being held in a Welland courtroom before Judge James Ramsay.

Lam spent three months in a coma after the collision at the intersection of Stanley Avenue and MacLeod Road.

Lam was on her way to begin her shift at the Skylon Tower, where she had worked for 28 years.

Dick walked away from the crash, though blood soaked his face and hand, Dugan said.

“It looked like the blood had been spray-painted on,” Dugan said.

In his opening statement, Crown attorney Andrew Brown said the trial will hear evidence Dick had been drinking at a nearby Hooters restaurant and that his blood-alcohol level was three times the legal limit.

Brown said the speed limit on the Stanley Avenue in that area is 50 km/h.

Dugan had stopped nearby on Stanley Avenue in the parking lot of the Mount Carmel Spiritual Centre when he first heard the engine noise, then saw the Nissan pickup truck roar past at what he estimated to be 150 km/h.

“I thought to myself, ‘Holy f---; this guy is flying,’” Dugan said. “Three second later, I heard the bang and saw a cloud of smoke.”

Defence attorney Frank Genesee questioned Dugan’s estimate of the truck’s speed, pouncing on what Dugan said was a typo in his motor vehicle accident report. On one page of the report, Dugan wrote the truck was travelling 90 km/h. On another he wrote 150 km/h. Dugan insisted multiple times the speed was 150 km/h.

“You do agree that the speed of the truck is very important in this case,” Genesee said.

Lam was taken to Greater Niagara General Hospital before being air- lifted to a Hamilton hospital. She sustained a serious head injury and spinal fractures and is in a wheelchair. She will never work again.

Earlier in the day, under crossexamination by Genesee, Inch said the black Nissan truck would have had the right of way at that intersection, which only has a stop sign on MacLeod Road.

Lam’s Pontiac was making a left turn onto Stanley.

Tom Lam, 62, told the court has had to quit his job to tend to his wife’s needs full time. He said his wife has to learn to talk again and has short-term memory loss.

“She can remember what she had for lunch, but not for breakfast,” he said.

Because of the confined spaces of the courtroom in Welland, when Lam testified, he had to push his wife in her wheelchair beyond the bar of the courtroom and directly in front of the prisoner’s box to find room for his wife’s wheelchair. He did so without looking over at Dick.

Brown asked Lam, who was at home in the couple’s apartment on MacLeod Road at the time of the collision, if he remembered what happened on Aug. 29, 2013.

“I have nightmares about that day all the time,” he said.

The trial will continue all this week.