KELOWNA — It might be the first time in B.C. that a person has been sent to jail for running a yellow light at an intersection.
It happened Monday in a Kelowna courtroom, where a professional truck driver from Alberta was handed a three week jail term and banned from driving for three years.
Jeffrey Robert Penz, 39, apparently doesn’t have much regard for traffic laws.
Tragically, when he ignored the advance warning lights at a Highway 97 intersection, the resulting crash killed one person and injured several others.
For a professional driver, he has a horrible record — six times his licence has been suspended and has 37 convictions for breaking the rules of the road, including when he ran a yellow light at a Highway 97 intersection in West Kelowna in June 2010 — his truck hitting a vehicle that was turning left.
Penz’s big rig then hit a car, both vehicles crashing over an embankment — the truck catching fire.
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The driver of the car, Ethan Baptiste of the Osoyoos Indian Band, was a PHD at UBC Okanagan who passionately embraced his native culture.
His girlfriend was badly injured in the crash.
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The prosecutor calls Penz a danger to everyone on the roads, saying he has a cavalier indifference to driving laws, pointing out four of Penz’s 37 infractions came after the crash that killed Baptiste. It was a speeding ticket just a few weeks later. The crown wanted Penz jailed for three months and banned for driving for five to seven years.
The defence lawyer says Penz only made a bad split second decision to run the yellow light saying the standard $167 ticket is a sufficient penalty — making legal argument that under the offense act, it is the only penalty that can be applied. The lawyer also claims that considering the number of kilometres Penz drives annually, 37 convictions over 21 years is not so bad.
The judge sentenced Penz to 21 days in jail and banned him from driving for three years.
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