Trial begins for Ont. truck driver involved in fatal Alberta bus crash

Dean Bennett, THE CANADIAN PRESS

EDMONTON - An Alberta Mountie was grilled on the witness stand Monday on why he left his post diverting traffic just minutes before a semi tractor-trailer slammed into an immobile passenger bus, killing six and injuring 21 others.

"I didn't foresee the tragedy that happened that night," Const. Daniel Kehler told Court of Queen's Bench on the opening day of the trial of Inderjit Singh Virk.

Virk is charged with six counts of dangerous driving causing death and 21 counts of dangerous driving causing bodily harm in the crash that occurred just after midnight on May 20, 2005.

The 35-year-old from Brampton, Ont., was driving a truckload of peat moss down a highway just outside Edmonton when it slammed into the bus, which was full of oilfield workers coming to the Alberta capital from Fort McMurray.

Dressed in a black pinstripe suit, Virk answered, "I am not guilty" to each of the 27 charges as they were read aloud in court.

In his opening address, Crown prosecutor John Kennedy suggested speed was not the issue. The case, he said, boils down to: "Did Mr. Virk keep proper lookout?"

The night began when Kehler - a newby just a year out of RCMP training depot at the time - and another officer were called to a single-vehicle rollover near the town of Gibbons.

The highway was still wet from a recent rainfall and it was hard to see. "There was no natural light. It seemed exceptionally dark," he said.

They were on Highway 28, the main artery up to the booming oilsands industry in Fort McMurray. It was a Thursday night and Thursdays were always busy - transport trucks, oil trucks, cars and passenger buses full of workers.

The Mounties were short-staffed; the detachment was down one officer. Kehler was ordered to go up the road and divert the traffic that was piling up and snarling as buses and cars tried to turn around on the narrow, steep-shouldered highway.

Kehler drove a kilometre north and parked his cruiser across an intersection to block it. He turned on his lights and flashers and then decided to hitch a ride back to the accident scene.

The medical helicopter was coming and rubberneckers were jamming the road.

"I felt it was important to go back, give (my partner) a hand," testified Kehler.

"You thought by parking your police car in the middle of the road, that would cause (other drivers) to turn off onto a country road?" asked defence lawyer Alex Pringle.

"Yes."

"It didn't though, did it?"

"No."

Minutes after returning to the rollover, Kehler decided he needed his cruiser and hitched a ride back.

This time he found a bus perpendicular to the road, blocking both lanes, with cars snaking along the shoulder, flowing around the bus like water past a stone.

The bus was hopelessly stuck in mud and spinning its wheels.

Kehler was angry. Several motorists had ignored his police car and driven around it. He chewed out the bus driver, he said, and had words with other drivers before he got back to his own cruiser.

At that point, he said, getting the bus off the road was the highest priority. He tried to raise his colleagues on the radio, but they were out of touch.

So he too drove around the bus and returned to the rollover scene to grab a tow truck driver.

He didn't put flares or warning signs in front of the bus, he said, or ask the driver to do the same: "What I saw was a fully illuminated bus parked across the highway.

"The obstacle was bigger than anything I could put in front of it."

At the rollover, he dispatched the tow truck driver. Minutes later, word came over the radio: a truck has hit a bus on Highway 28. Multiple casualties.

Kehler didn't ask for a location: "I knew immediately where it was."

He returned to find carnage - bodies lying motionless and men staggering through the mist of escaping engine steam.

"There was chaos," he said.

"You make a split-second decision, what options are open to you," he told Pringle.

The defence lawyer asked the officer why he didn't call in more manpower.

"It wasn't my decision to make."

"If you had proper manpower, you never would have left your cruiser unattended on the highway, would you?" asked Pringle.

"I would've stayed with my police car."

[ 2008-09-22 ]