In daylight of April last year, a bus full of young junior team ice hockey players were travelling to a nearby town to play s rival team in rural Saskatchewan province, when a semi trailer truck barrelled through an intersection with a Stop sign and T-Boned the school bus. 16 players, officials and driver were killed and 13 injured, some paralyzed.
On Tuesday Jaskirat Singh Sidhu the truck driver of a Sikh owned transport company appeared before the court and pleaded guilty to 16 counts of dangerous driving causing death and 13 counts of dangerous driving causing bodily harm. Each count of causing death carries with it a maximum of 10 years in prison. Sidhu was not impaired (alcohol or drugs) or distracted, or speeding. For unknown reasons, he was zoned out enough to make a mistake of not heeding the stop sign. In Canadian courts, merely making a mistake through a momentary lapse is not enough for the prosecutor to prove dangerous driving. It had to be established that his driving was a marked departure from the behaviour of normal driving. Since he pleaded guilty to all charges against him, it is not known whether the prosecutor’s evidence was enough to meet the high burden of securing a conviction. Sidhu made known through his lawyer that he was devastated and he did not wish to put the families and victims through a trial. As he put it “I cannot make things any better, but I certainly do not want to make them any worse.” Even before the trial, some parents of dead and injured persons had reached out to him with forgiveness and reconciliation. Both his actions and theirs restores one’s faith in humanity. Roland. Toronto.
