Carol Berner had no idea that she was going to be arrested on Dec. 10, 2008, her trial heard Wednesday morning.
Berner – on trial for dangerous and impaired driving in the death of a child in 2008 – and an undercover officer who she thought was her friend were on their way from Berner’s home to North Vancouver when they were pulled over by an unmarked police vehicle on 64th Street in Delta.
The officer testified that when she looked over at Berner, “she had a look of shock on her face.”
The officer knew that the arrest was coming.
One Delta police officer told the undercover operator to get out of the car and stand back, while another officer arrested Berner and put her in the back of their police vehicle, court heard.
The undercover officer said she never spoke to or saw Berner after that day.
Berner is on trial facing assorted charges in connection with an incident in which the car she was driving hit and killed four-year-old Alexa Middelaer and injured her aunt on May 17, 2008.
An undercover operation dubbed Project Angel was launched in October 2008 to determine if Berner was criminally culpable.
Earlier Wednesday, the undercover officer testified about receiving a number of desperate text and voice messages from Berner on Dec. 3, 2008.
When she checked her phone that morning at about 8, the officer found three texts and two voicemails, she said. They indicated that Berner wanted to kill herself and needed the officer to call her right away.
“Call me. I want to die tonight,” read a text received at 12:07 a.m., court heard.
A voice mail left at 12:15 a.m. said, “Hi [officer], I need to talk to you because I want to end my life tonight, so I hope you eventually pick up your phone.”
The officer was alarmed, she testified. “It did concern me to get those messages . . . I had no idea if she was safe or not,” she said.
The officer called her cover officer and then tried to call and text Berner and her roommate several times.
When she finally got in touch with Berner, Berner told her she’d had an upsetting conversation with her sister that was further aggravated by images of children in TV ads, court heard.
Berner told her she had been holding a knife, but her roommate took it away, the officer said, adding that Berner said she was OK when the officer called.
Berner’s lawyer, David Tarnow, questioned the officer on a number of aspects of the undercover operation.
He implied that the police had spared no expense to undertake the scenarios conducted between Oct. 10 and Dec. 10, 2008.
“I suggest to you that, really, there was no end on the budget for this operation,” he said to the officer.
She responded that she didn’t know what it cost but was not aware of any specific spending limit. The officer did say that her actions and spending had to be accounted for and she did not spend frivolously.
Tarnow also asked of the officer, after hearing Berner say many times that she had lost control of her vehicle when it started swerving from left to right shortly before the crash, if she had suggested further examination of Berner’s car.
The officer said she hadn’t because she was simply an undercover operator and the information she gleaned during each scenario was passed on to investigators.
“That was not my role,” she said.
Tarnow also pointed out that Berner’s car had been destroyed in early November 2008, before she was charged with any alleged crime, and implied that the police investigation was unfair.
The trial continues.
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