They shouldn’t have been tried: relative
MONTREAL — A Quebec man whose kid sister was one of 47 people killed in the Lac-Mégantic tragedy says the three men acquitted Friday should have never been put on trial.
“I think, very sincerely, that since the day of the accident, these people have been living in purgatory and it must have been extremely difficult,” Bernard Boulet told the Canadian Press. “I’m happy these three people are free.”
A jury found Tom Harding, Richard Labrie and Jean Demaitre not guilty of criminal negligence causing the death of 47 people in connection with the July 2013 train derailment and subsequent explosion.
Boulet said he agrees with the verdicts.
“It was an unfortunate accident,” said Boulet, himself a former railway traffic controller. “It was caused by nonchalance and an accumulation of events — by the nonchalance of the [rail company] owner, Edward Burkhardt.”
Before and during the trial, defence lawyers and Lac-Mégantic residents often brought up Burkhardt’s name.
They insinuated it was he who was primarily responsible for the tragedy in his role as chairman of the now-defunct, Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway, which owned the train and the tracks on which it derailed.
Reached by telephone at his office outside Chicago shortly after Friday’s verdicts were announced, Burkhardt told the Canadian Press he wasn’t surprised to hear people were suggesting he should have been the one on trial.
“There were a lot of people screaming for people — including me — to stand trial and all that,” he said. “The police and the prosecutors made a thorough investigation of what happened and so did the [Transportation Safety Board of Canada], and they concluded [if] there was going to be a prosecution it would be limited to the people that they brought, and I can’t say more than that.”
Burkhardt became public enemy No. 1 in the days following the crash, when his blunt, sometimes unsentimental remarks drew the ire of the grieving public.
His brief stop in Lac-Mégantic is perhaps best remembered for his tumultuous news conference, during which he was heckled by angry locals.
Burkhardt said he lost his investments in the company’s bankruptcy and that he agreed to settle in a civil suit brought against him even though he doesn’t feel he was personally responsible for the tragedy.
He did not say how much money he paid in the settlement.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada’s investigation concluded: “There were also significant gaps between [MMA’s] operating instructions and how work was done day to day.
“This and other signs in MMA’s operations were indicative of a weak safety culture — one that contributed to the continuation of unsafe conditions and unsafe practices, and significantly compromised the company’s ability to manage risk.”