A probe by the province's police watchdog found an OPP officer committed no criminal offence when a vehicle he had been pursuing crashed south of Tillsonburg, seriously injuring the driver.
The Special Investigations Unit (SIU) had been investigating the collision since it happened on August 1.
Three investigators and one forensic investigator were assigned to the case. They determined that, shortly before 3 p.m., an officer driving a marked police cruiser on Plank Road in Straffordville spotted a car being driven in a dangerous manner, nearly hit another vehicle head-on. The officer activated the cruiser's emergency lights and siren in an attempt to stop the car, but it sped away.
As the officer pursued the suspect vehicle, he watched make a left onto Sandytown Road before it blew through a stop sign at Heritage Line. It was at this point, the officer pulled over ending the pursuit. While stopped, another driver approached the officer to report a serious crash on Heritage Line.
Upon arrival at the crash site, the officer determined the vehicle that had crashed was the same one he had been trying to stop. The driver had lost control of the car, causing it to leave the roadway on a bend and roll several times before coming to rest in a cornfield.
The 58-year-old driver was ejected from the car and had to be airlifted to hospital for treatment of serious injuries.
"On my assessment of the evidence, there are no reasonable grounds to believe that the subject officer committed a criminal offence in connection with the collision," SIU Director Joseph Martino said in his final report.
Martino stated that although the officer reached a very high speed for roughly 30 seconds, there were no indications of any close-calls with other traffic.
"It bears noting that the subject officer, reasonably, in my view, discontinued the pursuit as soon as it became clear that the [driver] was not going to stop. Regrettably, though given ample opportunity to alter his course of driving, the [driver] continued in reckless fashion and crashed his vehicle," said Martino. "The officer did not transgress the limits of care prescribed by the criminal law in his brief engagement with the [car]. As such, there is no basis for proceeding with criminal charges in this case. The file is closed."
The SIU is an independent government agency that investigates incidents involving police that have resulted in death, serious injury, or allegations of sexual assault.
