SALMON ARM – The trial of an RCMP officer charged with dangerous operation of a motor vehicle continued Tuesday in Salmon Arm.
Micah Chan was charged last year after an investigation by the province’s police watch dog, the Independent Investigations Office, following the death of a young woman in June of 2013.
21-year-old Courtenay Eggen was killed when the car she was driving hit a parked dump truck.
A police cruiser also crashed nearby.
The accidents happened after Eggen allegedly failed to stop at a stop sign, and the officer gave chase.
The officer, Micah Chan, was later charged with dangerous driving.
This morning, court heard from two RCMP officers as well as an expert witness who testified about the GPS data stored in the mobile workstation in the police cruiser.
That data showed the police cruiser reached a top speed of over 150 km/hr.
“Driving a relatively new car that is maintained to policing standards, I don’t see anything wrong with that,” says defence lawyer Neville McDougall of the rate of speed. “Police cars travel that speed all the time.”
Inside the courtroom McDougall pressed the expert witness about whether the police cruiser was slowing down going into curves.
McDougall says Chan’s career is very important to him.
“He is upset about what happened. We don’t lose sight of the fact that a young lady lost her life in this,” says McDougall. “Quite frankly I’m not sure how the crown is pointing that this constituted dangerous driving on the part of the police officer.”
The Crown sees things differently.
The GPS logs show the incident took place in less than two minutes.
The prosecution alleges all the circumstances from that short period come together to create dangerous driving and that’s what Crown council will be trying to prove as the trial continues.
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