A Prince George man who was behind the wheel during a high-speed rollover that led to the death of a friend and serious injuries at least one other was sentenced Monday to two years and nine months in jail.
Upon completion of the sentence, Dustin Allen Tisdale, 24, will also be prohibited from driving for three years under the terms provincial court judge Peter McDermick issued for the March 12, 2016 crash.
Devin Hawley-Barks, 21, was killed and Sara Willsie suffered long-lasting injuries.
A RCMP traffic reconstructionist estimated Tisdale was going at least 165 km/h when he lost control and flipped while chasing another pickup on Highway 97 between Handlen Road and Austin Road.
McDermick found Tisdale's driving was "particularly egregious" and showed a high-degree of recklessness.
Friends and family of Tisdale and Hawley-Barks packed the gallery to take in the decision which took McDermick about 40 minutes to deliver, a good portion of it focussed on the effects it has had on Hawley-Barks' family and on Willsie.
McDermick called the incident a "senseless, tragic, unnecessary loss of a young man's life" and said the victim impact statements from Hawley-Barks' parents "heart-achingly sad to read." Hawley-Barks mother, Connie Hawley, said she "died inside that day" while his father, Lawrence Barks, was "filled with grief"
Willsie, then the mother of a new-born son, suffered serious spinal injuries and spent four months in Vancouver going through rehabilitation. It was initially doubted she would ever be able to walk again and while she now can, it's only with the help of ankle orthotics. She also continues to need catheters to go to the bathroom because of nerve damage.
"She mentions that every day is a struggle and the simplest tasks, such as grocery shopping and lifting her child, are problematic and at times impossible due to constant back pains and limited mobility," McDermick said.
Financially, Willsie is now only getting by and continues to suffer emotional fallout, including a fear of being a passenger in a truck.
According to an agreed statement of facts, Tisdale had been party-hopping and drinking with friends after leaving his truck at the Austin Road East Tim Hortons. By about 12:30 a.m., he was back at the restaurant when he came across Cody Furnell and three others in another pickup truck.
There were also eight or nine wooden pallets in the box of Furnell's vehicle. With Hawley-Barks and Willsie, with him, Tisdale pulled his pickup alongside and with permission of one of the people in Furnell's truck, Hawley-Barks and Tisdale transferred the pallets over to his truck.
But in an apparent fallout from a minor altercation the weekend before, some of the people in each truck started yelling at each other. To avoid making matters worse, Furnell drove out of the parking lot while two more people - Alyssa Tylee and Riley Sindia - hopped into Tisdale's truck. Willsie later told police she had heard someone in the Tisdale truck say "follow him."
Tisdale was driving while Hawley-Barks sat in the front passenger seat and Sindia sat behind Tisdale. Because there was a child seat in the middle of the back seat, Willsie and Tylee shared the rear passenger side seat.
Furnell had turned north onto a frontage road but as he stopped at traffic light at the intersection of Highway 97 and Weisbrod-Handlen Roads, he saw Tisdale, whose truck had been modified with after-market parts to increase its speed, driving at a fast rate and catching up to him.
Furnell turned left onto the highway without signaling and took off with Tisdale in pursuit. The driver of another pickup told police he had been going at 90 km/h when the two passed him "like he was standing still," the court was told.
The two had switched to the left lane to pass the vehicle. Furnell returned to the right lane as did Tisdale, but only part way and then he veered back into the left lane as if to pass Furnell. The driver of the truck the two had just passed said he then saw a cloud of dust and then Tisdale's truck fishtale, hit a concrete meridian and then begin to roll before coming to a rest upside down in a ditch just before Austin Road.
Just prior to the collision, Sindia advised everyone to put their seatbelts on but Tylee and Willsie were unable to do so and Hawley-Barks remained unstrapped and all three were ejected from the truck. From the time they left the Tim Hortons to when Tisdale went off the road, about four minutes had passed, the court was told.
Furnell had pressed his brake pedal just prior to Tisdale going off the road, McDermick noted, and found it "somewhat linked" to the crash.
"But what this court focuses on is the lead-up decision to pursue the vehicle, to approach it and to drive relatively close to it at a very significant speed in a context where several passengers were not wearing seatbelts and finally in a context where there were more passengers than could be safely accommodated," McDermick said.
Hawley-Barks was pronounced dead at the scene.
Neither Tylee nor Sindia provided victim impact statements but according to civil lawsuits they have filed against Tisdale and Furnell, Tylee suffered fractures to her lumbar spine and clavicle and Sindia was left wth a concussion with mild brain trauma among other injuries.
Willsie has also filed civil actions against Tisdale and Furnell.
Crown prosecution had been seeking between three to three-and-a-half years in jail followed by a four-year driving prohibition while defence counsel argued for 18 months to two years in jail and a two-and-a-half-year driving prohibition to start from the date of sentencing.
In reaching his decision. McDermick noted a positive pre-sentence report for Tisdale and as part of a sentencing hearing in June, 14 letters of reference were submitted to the court in which he was described as giving, remorseful and a valuable worker.
The father of two young children with a common law spouse, Tisdale is a heavy equipment operator at the Mount Milligan mine.Tisdale has seven driving violations to his name, including three for speeding, but the last was issued in November 2013.
In October, Tisdale pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing death in the case of Hawley-Barks and to two counts of dangerous driving causing bodily harm, all under the Criminal Code. The counts are reduced from the charges Tisdale had originally been facing of criminal negligence causing death and bodily harm under the Criminal Code.
