SUDBURY - The Special Investigation Unit has cleared Ontario Provincial Police in the June 7 death of a 49-year-old woman fatally injured in a collision with an OPP boat on Nepewassi Lake.
The director of the province’s police watchdog, Joseph Martino, detailed the events of the early morning crash in his report stating there were no grounds to find the officers “committed a criminal offence in connection with the collision and the woman’s death.”
It was at approximately 9:43 p.m. when OPP received a call from a man requesting police remove a woman from his property on an island on Nepewassi Lake. He told dispatchers she was intoxicated and pushed him down some stairs.
The woman later told police the man “had backhanded her twice,” states the report. She said she had run away, and when he followed her, she pushed him, and the man fell down the stairs.
Two officers arrived at the island by boat at approximately 12:53 a.m. Following an investigation, the report states the officers arrested the man for assault and took him into custody “without incident.”
The woman was told that the man “would be taken a distance away to the OPP boat launch on the mainland to be processed, after which he would be released and returned. She was to remain at the property and await the return of the officers, who would transport her to shore on their arrival.”
One of the officers said he told the woman to get dressed “for when they returned to get her.”
She said she could not see anything because her phone battery was depleted and there was no power. The other officer on scene told her to stay inside and await their return. “He asked her if she had any questions, and she did not,” states the report.
Texts messages contained in the report reveal that the woman texted a family member when the man called police, and later, at 12:17 a.m., that the man had turned off the power and the battery in her phone was almost dead.
At 12:29 a.m., the woman texted the family member: “They are making me leave I have no choice.” She told them that the police took the man “away in cuffs in cuffs and left, told me nothing and I am sitting in the dark with no idea.”
By 1:33 a.m., the woman began texting the man who had gone with police. “I am still sitting here in the dark,” and “cops told me nothing and y’all just left what am I supposed to do now.”
At 1:41 a.m., she texted, “What am I supposed to do?” and, “If you get messages, I’ll bail (you out) for (whatever) reason like why did you all just leave and tell me nothing or why.”
At 2:02 a.m., a little over twenty minutes before the fatal collision, she texted the man, “Do I come get you?”
Having processed and released the man on an undertaking — a promise to appear in court — the officers boarded the boat with the man and headed back to the island. They were approximately 200-300 metres from the shore when the OPP boat collided with the aluminum boat the woman was driving
The boat, about four metres long and 1.7 metres across with a tiller outboard motor, did not have proper lighting, and tests showing the amount of light offered by a flashlight the woman had with her was inconclusive, the SIU said.
The OPP boat was travelling east and the woman’s boat was headed west; the OPP boat went over top of the smaller vessel, which “resulted in the paint transfer to the underbelly of the (OPP boat) as the port side of the (woman’s) vessel’s hull folded inwards.”
When officers turned back to the collision scene, they found the woman in the boat with its engine turned off.
The woman was unconscious, "had a four-inch laceration to her forehead, which bled. A bandage and direct pressure were applied to the wound," the SIU said.
"The (woman) was breathing but unresponsive when spoken to,” reads the report. “The (officer) asked if an Ornge air ambulance was available. The dispatcher advised the Ornge air ambulance was out of service for the evening."
Police brought her on board the OPP boat and took her to shore. Paramedics arrived at approximately 3 a.m. and transported her to HSN, where was diagnosed with polytrauma, “including severe traumatic brain injury.” She was pronounced dead June 7 at 2 p.m.
In his report, Martino said the police officer acted with "due care and regard for public safety while engaged in the exercise of his duties in the time leading to the collision, and noted not only the officer’s experience as a boat operator, but also his use of navigational lights and that “he was proceeding safely by all accounts “when the collision happened.
"Regrettably, the boat in which the (woman) was in did not have any navigational lights and ought not have been in the water at that time of night,” states the report. “It would appear on the evidence, both testimonial and forensic (including a re-enactment of the incident), that (her) vessel was simply not visible until it was too late."
