Valleyfield, Que. – The credibility of a forensic expert was called into question on day four of the Brandon Pardi trial.
Pardi is accused of dangerous driving and criminal negligence causing the death of three-year-old Bianca Leduc on Halloween 2007.
On Friday, forensic engineer Olivier Bellavigna-Ladoux was called to testify for the defence.
Bellavigna-Ladoux has never formally studied in the field of accident reconstruction, but said he keeps up-to-date on new technologies.
That wasn’t good enough for the crown prosecutor Joey Dubois.
Little experience
He called the engineer’s credibility into question.
Bellavigna-Ledoux admitted he had only testified in about half a dozen criminal cases.
That included the trial for the other driver involved in the crash that killed Bianca.
Bellavigna-Ledoux said he based his findings on physics, mathematical equations and information made available to him by police experts.
None of that was important to Bianca’s mother.
“I don’t believe him as an expert, what he says isn’t important to me, even with all his experience, he has never actually done any accident reconstruction,” Nadine Leduc said.
About a dozen of Bianca’s family came to the Valleyfield courthouse on Friday, hoping to hear from Pardi himself.
The 21-year-old is expected to take the stand in his own defence – but that will happen next week.
Nadine Leduc is anxious to hear Pardi recount what happened the day her daughter was killed.
“I’m eager to see if he will say, “˜Ah, I didn’t want to race’,” the mother said.
The last four days haven’t been easy for Bianca’s family.
Always in their hearts
They’ve had to hear over and over again how the three-year-old died.
“This has been going on for four years, four years that we’ve been going through this… we’ll always carry this in our hearts,” said Chantal Pelchat, Bianca’s godmother.
It hasn’t been easy for Pardi’s family either.
His mother wiped away tears as she listened in the courtroom this week.
Meanwhile, Nadine Leduc has not had any contact with the young man charged with killing her daughter.
She wears a t-shirt everyday with the slogan, “speed kills”.
She says it’s to remind him of what happened.
“Brandon Pardi seems cold every time we see him, like he has no feelings,” the mother said.
Overall, Nadine says it doesn’t matter what the experts say, or how fast Pardi was driving.
What does matter, she says, is that he had no right to be behind the wheel in the first place.
“He didn’t have his license. He had a learner’s permit. He never should have been driving alone,” she said. “He has no reason to say it wasn’t his fault.”
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