Dead centre

The case of the driver who killed Jeff Vader on Kelly Road goes on trial

STORY: RICK CONROY WITH FILES FROM KATHLEEN SABYAN AND
PETER SZTUKE

It was a senseless tragedy—and despite a week long trial—the death of Jeff Vader on a spring day nearly three years ago makes no more sense now than the day he died.

Debbie Vader had been cleaning up her yard on Kelly Road, clearing leaves and trimming the overgrowth on a slightly overcast Friday afternoon. Her husband Jeff was helping out. He had just pulled up with a fourwheeler and trailer to gather the brush and leaves. He was getting off the machine when the saw Eric Menard’s big black truck barrelling down the road toward town. This was a common site. According to testimony heard in court, Menard was known on the road as a maniac driver. He was going too fast for the road. According to his neighbours, Menard was always going through this cluster of rural homes at a reckless rate of speed.

The roadway takes a hard right turn after the Vader house, then proceeds a few hundred metres and takes a sharp left toward Picton. Menard rounded the second turn but, as the court would hear later, Menard turned around in a laneway and peeled back toward the Vader home.

Jeff Vader heard Menard turn around. He dropped his handful of brush and strode toward the road way to flag Menard down or gesture to him to slow down. Debbie Vader urged her husband to leave it alone. “It isn’t worth it,” she urged husband.

But he didn’t listen to her plea. Just as Jeff Vader approached the roadway, Menard’s black truck rounded the corner at high speed—way too tight—cutting across the Vaders’ lawn. According to expert testimony presented at trial, Menard hit Vader “dead centre” at speed. Menard struck Vader so hard his body flew 20 metres through the air before landing on the roadway and skidding to the opposite shoulder.

As Vader lay dying on the roadway, Menard drove to his home next door and called 9-1-1. Debbie ran to her husband and cradled his head until the ambulance arrived. An air ambulance had been dispatched to Picton, but it wouldn’t be needed; Jeffrey Vader was pronounced dead at Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital. It was a violent and brutal way to die.

It would take several months for charges to be laid against Eric Menard. In September, four months later, he was charged with dangerous driving causing death—a charge carrying a maximum sentence of 14 years imprisonment. Wrapping up more than two years of procedural delays, Menard’s trial finally got underway last week at the Picton courthouse.

“PRONE TO EXAGGERATION”
The picture that emerged over three days of testimony was that of a close-knit rural community at odds with a neighbour most considered “bizarre” and a hazard on the road.

Menard didn’t appear to help himself as he testified that he had variously been an NHL goalie, a race car driver (thus the urge and ability to drive at high speed), a martial arts expert and a registered nurse’s assistant.

Menard told the court he had at some point in his life won a million dollars, and subsequently given it all away. He said he had travelled to Thailand after the devastating tsunami in that county to offer aid to victims of the disaster.

Menard also claims to be an industrial inventor, having developed a three-bladed lawnmower, and designing an automobile that he said he was planning to manufacture on his Kelly Road property.

Judge Robert Scott probed some of these claims only to have Menard backtrack until the stories lay in tatters or were revealed as lies. Evenutally Menard said he made up the story about winning a million dollars because the Vader family is suing him and he wished to give the impression he doesn’t need money.

Scott urged Menard to stick to the truth—but in the end concluded that Menard is a “self-promoter and his invention of facts affects his credibility.”

HARD FEELINGS
Neighbours testified that when Menard moved to Kelly Road in 2004 they had made an attempt to befriend him but his “bizarre stories” and odd behaviours soon devolved into hard feelings.

The tension reached a peak when bylaw enforcement officers appeared at Menard’s home one day with an order to clean up his machinery and garbage-filled yard. A few days later Debbie Vader notice Menard standing in her driveway. She stepped out onto her porch. Menard accused her, incorrectly it turns out, of calling the bylaw officials on him. Vader recalls he yelled angrily from the driveway: “You cost me a lot of money!”

Debbie Vader never told her husband about it.

On the day of the Vader’s death, Menard testified he was heading to PEFAC in Picton to work out when he realized he had forgotten his key to his locker (although later he testified it wasn’t the key, but the lock he was returning to retrieve). Menard testified that as he rounded the second curve Vader was in the middle of the road—that he swerved left to avoid him, but Vader jumped in the same direction.

“Both [Vader and Menard] made a bad decision,” summed up John Erickson, Menard’s lawyer.

Menard says he went to his home and called 9-1-1 and waited at the end of his lane.

Debbie Vader told a very different story—one that seems to be consistent with evidence from an accident reconstruction expert. She explained that her husband was at the edge of the roadway as Menard sliced across the corner of their property with two wheels on the grass, hitting Menard with such force Vader’s arms and head dented the hood of the truck, and his legs snapped the grill.

Constable James Carley (ret.), found that Menard had made a quick turn in a nearby driveway. The accident reconstruction expert determined that Menard had rounded the corner on the wrong side of the roadway, cutting into Vader’s lawn, and that the vehicle had not taken any evasive manoeuvre to avoid Vader. Nor, according to Carley, was there evidence that Menard tried to stop.

“No braking effect was evident,” testified Carley. Erickson challenged Debbie Vader’s account— suggesting that her credibility was in question because she witnessed the killing of her husband.

“She was in extreme emotional stress,” said Erickson. “How can you rely on her testimony to tell you where he was hit?”

Erickson also attempted to chip away at the accident reconstruction expert’s testimony – noting that shrubs and trees partially obscured Menard’s view as he rounded the corner.

He challenged the witness’s estimation of speed and Menard’s perception of where he was on the “nasty corner.”

Judge Scott interjected at this point in Erickson’s summation.

“Why does this matter?” asked Scott. “What if someone had been on a bicycle or a child walking along the road? Why did he go around the corner on somebody’s lawn?”

Erickson argued to the judge that to meet the test of dangerous driving causing death, he had to find that Menard had driven in a manner that was a “marked” departure from the standard that someone would reasonably drive.

Crown attorney Laurie Nichols suggested in summation that this standard includes driving on the right side of the road.

Throughout the four days of testimony, about 20 family members and friends of Jeff Vader’s sat and listened to the proceedings. Judge Scott told the court he would give his decision on February 10.

VIDEO STATEMENT EXCLUDED
Much of the first part of the trial dealt with preliminary matters aimed at determining whether Menard had been fully advised of his rights specifically as the incident became a criminal investigation. Eventually the judge concluded that the investigating OPP officer Gordon Lake had not adequately advised Menard of his right to legal counsel as he was questioned in the OPP station.

Scott subsequently ruled a videotaped statement recorded at the time of police questioning to be inadmissible.