The truck driver responsible for the monster pileup that killed four motorists on Highway 440 in Laval in 2019 cannot digest the guilty verdict rendered against him last month and is turning to the Court of Appeal.
• Read also: Four dead in a monster pileup on the 440: the truck driver found guilty of criminal negligence
On August 5, 2019, Jagmeet Grewal, driving a semi-trailer, collided head-on with a line of vehicles stopped in front of him, although visible from several meters in advance. At trial, we learned that he never braked, neither before nor after the impact.
Gilles Marsolais, 54 years old, Michèle Bernier, 48 years old, Sylvain Pouliot, 55 years old, and Robert Tanguay Laplante, 26 years old, had perished. Others were seriously injured as the expressways turned into a scene of chaos dotted with burning vehicles.
However, at the time of the tragedy, he was banned, for life, from driving a heavy truck, following a decision by the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec.
“That day, he knew that he could not drive and by doing so, he put the safety of others at high risk,” judge Yanick Laramée ruled, finding him guilty of eight counts of criminal negligence causing death and injury.
He wants to be acquitted
The 57-year-old accused addressed the Court of Appeal earlier this week and is demanding a new trial or outright acquittal.
Another twist in this long legal process, which shocked one of its victims, Patricia Laplante, who was seriously injured in the pileup.
“It’s annoying! It’s going to be five years soon, and it’s not stopping. That doesn’t make any sense,” she hissed.
According to Grewal, a serious legal error was made when his personal file at the SAAQ was admitted as evidence for his trial.
Grewal had also worked hard, in vain, to exclude this major element from the Crown’s evidence.
What he contested was more precisely the filing of his compensation file from the SAAQ, in which we learned that he had been deemed unfit to drive a truck, permanently, due to after-effects following of a serious road collision in the United States in 2012.
He had since suffered from serious psychiatric problems and had to take several medications that interfered with driving.
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Despite everything, he applied again to obtain a new license to drive trucks and he obtained it… by mistake.
Not “uncontrolled contempt”
The different departments of the SAAQ did not speak to each other, in fact. Thus, he was granted a class 1 license, necessary to drive a truck, even if he was compensated due to his inability to be behind the wheel.
“His behavior illustrates that he had absolutely no consideration for the safety of others and that he was ready to do anything to work as a professional truck driver, despite the fact that he was psychologically and physically incapable of doing so,” lamented the judge. Laramée, in his judgment.
“We must keep in mind that he was not driving a normal vehicle, but was rather behind the wheel of a potentially dangerous heavy truck, which is considered a weapon,” she added.
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In his notice of appeal, the accused disagreed with the judge, who concluded that his conduct demonstrated a “reckless and reckless disregard for the lives and safety of others.”
The Court of Appeal will have to decide whether it will examine the file.
Until then, Jagmeet Grewal will return to the Laval courthouse for sentencing observations in the coming months.