A police constable charged with dangerous driving causing death testified Tuesday he sometimes returns to the crash scene, with questions of his own.
“I’ve sat there on the boulevard and tried to find answers why it happened,” said Const. Chris Luimes. “Certainly Mrs. Walden did not deserve this. Anyone with a good heart does not deserve this.
“It’s my duty as a police officer to preserve life. As a husband. As a dad.”
Luimes has pleaded not guilty. He was charged in the death of 84-year-old Annie Walden after his speeding unmarked police car slammed into the elderly woman’s Volkswagen.
A police team conducting surveillance on March 8, 2012, Luimes and other officers were trailing a man suspected of selling stolen gold jewelry.
Annie Walden (Supplied)
“I was the first one from our team engaging the subject vehicle,” Luimes testified. “I was northbound around Whitemud and 75th Street, and that’s the last I remember. That’s it.”
“The next active memory I have — vaguely waking up in the hospital trauma room filled with police, family, friends, and very disorientated, and knowing I was in pretty bad shape.”
The crash happened 36 blocks north of Whitemud Drive at 76th Avenue and 75th Street.
On Tuesday morning, a police collision expert detailed the arithmetic facts that underscored the crash.
Luimes hit his brakes just before his police car slammed into the Volkswagen turning left across his path, Const. Binoy Prabhu testified in Court of Queen’s Bench.
But the police Nissan Altima was going too fast, and there simply wasn’t time.
The car Luimes was driving that day was going at least 117 km/h, about twice the posted limit on 75th Street, said Prabhu, who later studied the crash scene.
The Nissan’s “speed at impact” was 94 km/h.
That impact killed Walden.
The skid marks left by Nissan are consistent with a driver who took evasive action, Prabhu said, “to try and avoid the collision.”
Impossible to stop
The pre-impact tire marks measured 30.27 metres.
Given the high speed, it would have been impossible for Luimes to stop in time, Prabhu said. He would have needed 79.25 metres of road to stop.
He only had 27.94 metres.
Asked if the Nissan could have stopped had Luimes been driving the posted speed limit, Prabhu said: “Yes, sir.”
At 60 km/h, he would have needed 20.84 metres to stop giving him seven metres to spare.
Prabhu said evidence gathered at the scene and from the cars suggests Luimes “tried to steer away from the collision.”
There was no evidence that Walden perceived the threat of an oncoming collision, or that she did anything to try to avoid it, he said.
Luimes was working as a plainclothes officer on March 8, 2012. He and a team of investigators were conducting surveillance just after 10:30 a.m.
Const. Aaron Johnson testified the team was doing “lifestyle surveillance” that day, but said the man they were following up 75th Street was not wanted on warrants and was not a fugitive.
In surveillance operations, he said, the police car following the suspect is called the “eye,” while the secondary vehicle is called the “door,” and hangs back.
‘Sense of urgency’
“It was pretty heavy traffic that day,” Johnson said.
The target wasn’t speeding or breaking any traffic laws.
“I heard on the radio Chris was trying to get into position to become the eye,” he said. “I didn’t know where he was — just somewhere behind me.”
Johnson said his car was already at 82nd Avenue and 75th Street, several blocks north of the crash scene, when he stopped hearing Luimes on the radio.
He continued to follow the suspect all the way up to the NAIT campus, north of downtown.
Under cross-examination, he said “there was a sense of urgency” that day, because his car had been the “eye” for too long and needed to switch places.
Luimes, a six-year veteran of the force at the time, suffered serious injuries in the crash.
The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) investigated and more than a year later laid the charge against the Luimes.
Luimes told court Tuesday the crash shattered his right leg and broke two vertebrae in his neck.
He spent a month in hospital and has had four surgeries.
He said he cannot ever run again, and therefore cannot be a “fully operational police officer” anymore.
“You know, it’s hard,” he said. “You wake up every morning and get dressed, and see the physical scars, and it reminds me of what happened. And to be not in full duties as a police officer is really tough at times. Not to run with my kids in the park or my wife in a field. It’s tough. It has taken a toll on me, my family, my co-workers … everybody.”
The trial continues.
