Man sentenced for ‘incredibly dangerous’ driving

It’s amazing Marshall Ellis didn’t injure anyone during 15 minutes of high-speed driving on winding roads from Bedford to Dartmouth in the middle of the afternoon, a Crown attorney says.

Ellis, 21, pleaded guilty recently in Dartmouth provincial court to a charge of dangerous driving, saying he made a bad decision March 21 and was accepting responsibility for his actions.

Judge Jean Whalen gave Ellis a six-month conditional sentence, followed by a year’s probation, and prohibited him from driving anywhere in Canada for 18 months.

“This was absolutely unacceptable behaviour,” Crown attorney Janine Kidd said.

“His driving was incredibly dangerous and put the public at extreme risk. He showed extreme disregard for anybody else’s safety.”

Ellis’s white Camaro was going more than 200 km/h when it was first spotted by police on Highway 102 near Bedford at 2:43 p.m.

At least two police officers briefly chased the speeding Camaro at different points before shutting down their pursuits because the situation was too dangerous.

Ellis went through two red lights on Duke Street in Bedford, where his car was clocked at 192 km/h and was seen swerving across the road, and failed to stop at the intersection with Rocky Lake Drive, narrowly avoiding several vehicles along the way.

As he headed toward Dartmouth, Ellis was observed passing a vehicle on a hill with a turn, almost colliding with oncoming traffic.

An officer tried to block Waverley Road with a police SUV, but Ellis used the shoulder of the road to get around it. Police noted that there were numerous children walking along the road, school buses dropping off students and a garbage truck making frequent stops for curbside pickups.

An officer saw the Camaro almost collide with a loaded school bus in the area of Montebello Drive.

Ellis was arrested at about 3 p.m. after the vehicle stopped at an Irving gas station at 200 Waverley Rd. in Dartmouth. There was a passenger in the vehicle as well.

Ellis will be on house arrest at his girlfriend’s farm in East Gore, Hants County, for the first four months of the conditional sentence and will have to follow a 10 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew for the final two months.