Friends and family of Amanda and Peter Clark filled the courtroom gallery on Tuesday morning as attorneys presented their closing arguments on whether a 19-year-old driver should be found guilty of dangerous driving in the collision which left Amanda a widow three months ago.
Crossing guard Peter Clark was struck and killed on the morning of March 23 at the intersection of Cedarview Drive and Kennevale Road in Barrhaven. Xzander Wright was arrested about 24 hours later and pleaded guilty in April to failing to remain at the scene of a hit and run.
The matter went to trial in June as Wright pleaded not guilty to a separate charge of dangerous driving causing death, leaving it up to Justice David Berg to determine whether Wright’s decisions leading to the crossing guard’s death should be considered dangerous.
As the Crown and defence delivered their closing arguments, Wright, wearing a purple long-sleeve button-up shirt, sat in the accused’s box, often hanging his head or looking toward the ground.
The defence team, led by Lawrence Greenspon, called the case a “tragic perceptual failure, not a marked departure.”
He argued Wright’s behaviour constituted no unordinary steering, acceleration or braking, and that Wright never saw Clark walking into the intersection. Greenspon argued Wright’s vision could have been obstructed by the sunlight or the windshield pillar of the truck.
“A critical point of Xzander Wright’s evidence is that he didn’t see Mr. Clark,” Greenspon said. “If he had, there is no doubt he would have braked.”
Meanwhile, assistant Crown attorney Julian Daller argued that Wright was looking down while he advanced, and continued accelerating despite feeling a light tap, seeing the hand-held stop sign on the hood of the truck, then feeling two large bumps under the wheels.
It’s now up to the judge to decide whether Wright’s behaviour constituted dangerous driving, defined in court as a “marked departure from the standard care expected of a reasonable person in the circumstances of the accused.”
A three-and-a-half-minute video played during the trial showed the collision from across the intersection. The video shows the black pickup truck approaching the intersection and Peter jogging into the crosswalk in a reflective safety vest while holding a hand-held stop sign.
The truck then makes a rolling stop before accelerating and striking Peter, running him over as the truck continued into the intersection and turned left.
The truck continues several metres before stopping and making a U-turn and driving back toward the scene. A man gets out of the truck and takes a couple of steps toward the scene, before hesitating and returning to the vehicle and driving away.
Amanda Clark left the courtroom every time the video was displayed on the projector, her face red from crying as she wept quietly from the front row of the gallery while a family member stroked her back.
Wright took the stand in his own defence on March 25 and testified that he looked to his right and saw a family on the sidewalk he believed wasn’t intending to cross the road. Wright told the court he looked to his left and didn’t see anything, so he proceeded.
A police reconstructionist testified earlier in the trial that no re-enactment of the collision was completed, but she testified that she didn’t believe the vehicle’s windshield pillar — often known as the A-pillar — would have obstructed Wright’s view, considering Clark was standing in front of the truck when he was struck.
However, Greenspon argued the officers compiling the report “never bothered to look at blind spots,” and didn’t fully measure how Wright’s field of view could have been obstructed.
Greenspon’s closing arguments evolved into a back-and-forth interaction with Berg, who spoke up and challenged some of the defence attorney’s arguments as he was presenting them.
Justice Berg challenged Greenspon’s argument that the blind spots were relevant to the case considering police testimony about Peter’s positioning.
“Mr. Greenspon, if he was standing in front of the truck, part of his body would have been visible,” Berg said. “If you try to convince me otherwise, this is going to be a very long day.”
It was also during Greenspon’s closing arguments when Berg interjected to mention the hand-held stop sign which Wright testified he saw appear on the hood of the truck after he hit Clark, stating it was an element of the case “that makes absolutely no sense to me at all.”
Wright previously testified during cross-examination that he believed someone had thrown the stop sign at him.
“If something lands on your hood and is clearly a device used by someone who controls traffic, and you can’t see that person and you believe that person threw it at you, what’s the first thing you would do?” Berg asked.
“You would stop, right?” Greenspon responded.
“Bingo,” replied Berg.
The Crown also argued that Wright was looking down as he started accelerating, citing the video footage which shows Wright glancing at his lap at least once as he approached the intersection.
Wright testified in cross-examination that he was distracted by his vape falling off the centre console and into his lap. He testified he was looking down at the floor mat at one point and agreed with Daller when asked if that was a dangerous thing to do.
The Crown argued Wright’s own evidence on the witness stand “tended to shift” around whether he was looking forward or not when he began accelerating.
Daller continued to argue that Wright’s further actions of continuing to accelerate despite feeling and seeing signs of running Clark over without stopping was not the behaviour of a “reasonable person.”
“A reasonable person would foresee the risks of advancing as Mr. Wright did, and would not have done so,” Daller said. “A reasonable person would have come to a complete stop. They would look forward, and they would ensure that the way forward was clear from pedestrians before making the choice to advance.”
Both sides of the dangerous driving argument are now before the judge, who is expected to deliver his verdict in late September.
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