Driver who struck and killed pedestrian to be sentenced in October

Suzanne Jones was on her way to deliver Christmas cards to members of her late husband’s band when her life came to a tragic end as she walked along Ferry Street in Niagara Falls.

On Dec. 16, 2016, a car driven by Christopher Harvey went through a stop sign at Sylvia

Place and collided with a pickup truck. The car rotated, mounted the curb, and struck the pedestrian on the sidewalk.

Jones, a 50-year-old early-childhood educator from Hamilton, died instantly.

“There is not a day goes by that I don’t pray for the family,” Harvey said Tuesday during his sentencing hearing in an Ontario Court of Justice in St. Catharines. The 25-year-old Welland man was found guilty following a trial in May of dangerous driving causing death and obstructing police.

Court heard the roadway on Sylvia Place was snowy and slushy that night and the car Harvey was driving had bald tires. His girlfriend testified the defendant was driving in an aggressive manner and she had warned him to slow down prior to the crash.

There was no evidence presented at trial to suggest Harvey was impaired by alcohol or drugs at the time of the crash.

Assistant Crown attorney Andrew Brown has asked Judge Cameron Watson to impose a jail term of up to six years.

Defence lawyer John Lefurgey argued a penalty of four years behind bars was a more appropriate sentence. That sentence would be reduced to two years since Harvey has spent the equivalent of almost two-and-a-halfyears in pre-trial custody.

“This is not a case of someone intentionally driving through a stop sign,” he told the judge.

Jones was on her way to Big Texas to deliver Christmas cards to the band Neon Rain — her late husband Wayne Jones was once a member of the group — when she was struck and killed.

The judge will deliver his sentence Oct. 17.