Fatal crash caused by deer, driver testifies

Dangerous-driving suspect Brendan Chase Wild said Thursday he wasn’t showing off his friend’s sports car when he lost control of the vehicle in a deadly crash.

Wild told defence lawyer Rebecca Snukal he swerved to avoid a deer.

The Sundre man said he had picked up his former girlfriend, Leah Shingleton, and her friend, Amanda Harlos, in Red Deer to take them to a cabaret at the Sundre rodeo.

He was driving westbound on Highway 587 between Bowden and Highway 22 at the time of the early evening crash on June 23, 2012.

Harlos, 19, died at the scene and Shingleton, 27, was injured, suffering a compressed spinal cord and rib fractures.

Wild, 29, is charged with dangerous driving causing death and bodily harm in connection with the accident.

He said he was travelling at between 120 and 130 km/h in the 100 km/h zone, although about 10 minutes before losing control of the Nissan 350Z Shingleton asked him to slow down, which he did.

Moments before the crash, he said he went to light a cigarette and twice Shingleton pulled a smoke from his mouth before he could light it and threw it on the floor.

To prevent her succeeding a third time, he turned his head to the left but kept his eyes on the road as he lit his cigarette, he said.

“That’s when I noticed a deer and a baby on the right-hand shoulder,” Wild told Snukal.

“It startled me and I tried to go around it, and I guess I oversteered and the car went sideways and I tried to correct, to get it to come back the other way, and that’s pretty well all I remember before I was ejected from the vehicle.”

Wild denied he was showing off as they drove from Red Deer to Sundre, as Shingleton suggested.