O’Leary tells trial he doesn’t recall if wife drank before crash

Celebrity businessperson Kevin O’Leary testified at his wife’s trial on Wednesday, saying he did not recall if she had consumed alcohol in the hours before a “chaotic” boat crash that killed two people.

Linda O’Leary has pleaded not guilty to one charge of careless operation of a vessel under the Canada Shipping Act. She was driving the boat when it collided with another vessel at 11:30 p.m. on Aug. 24, 2019, on Lake Joseph, north of Toronto.

The couple and a family friend were returning to their cottage from a dinner party at another cottage when the crash happened.

“We just went right into it. It was just a huge surprise,” Kevin O’Leary testified by Zoom from Los Angeles. He said the other boat was “invisible” until moments before impact. The ski boat the O’Learys were in was travelling at between 14 and 20 (nautical) miles per hour at the time, he testified.

Kevin O’Leary, the former star of the CBC show “Dragons’ Den,” described the night as dark and moonless, and testified he saw “zero light” coming from the other vessel until after the collision, when he said the lights turned on and it drove away.

“It’s like it had a shroud on it or something,” he testified. “This is just an opinion, but you would have to work very hard to make a boat that size that dark.”

The moments after the crash were “chaotic,” O’Leary repeatedly said. He testified that both he and his wife called out to the other vessel and did not hear a response. He said his immediate focus in the aftermath was on the other passenger in the family’s boat who was bleeding from a head injury.

He said he learned at around 2 a.m. from a police officer that a passenger in the other boat had been killed, and another seriously injured.

Gary Poltash, 64, of Florida, died that night, and Suzana Brito, 48, from Uxbridge, Ont., died in hospital a few days later. Three people were also injured.

The question of whether the other boat, a 16-seat Nautique, had its lights on has been a point of contention in the case. Witnesses on the other boat, including the owner who was charged in the crash with failing to exhibit a navigation light, testified that they remembered some lights being on.

A police officer testified Linda O’Leary registered an “alert range’’ level of blood alcohol.