Jano Vincent is accused of killing another motorist on Highway 50 in a failed attempt to die by suicide.
The prosecutor in the trial of Jano Vincent, accused of murdering another motorist on Highway 50 in a failed attempt to kill himself, asked the jury hearing the case in St-Jérôme to focus on the impact of the fatal collision when they deliberate.
Vincent is charged with the second-degree murder of Robert Campion, 59. The victim was killed on Oct. 6, 2019, as he was returning from a camping trip. He was driving alone in a Sunseeker camper heading east toward Mirabel along Highway 50 when it was struck by Vincent’s Ford F-150 after the truck swerved into the oncoming lane.
The collision occurred at Kilometre 233 of the highway, in Grenville-sur-la-Rouge. Campion died on impact and Vincent suffered injuries that left him in a coma. It took firefighters more than two hours to remove him from the heavily damaged pickup truck.
“If you believe the accused deliberately drove his vehicle into Mr. Campion’s, then you can infer he foresaw the death of the other driver,” Baribeau said on Thursday, the second day of his closing arguments in the trial that began on June 3.
Baribeau argued Vincent chose Highway 50 to end his own life in a high-speed collision because the evidence heard at trial revealed he had no reason to have been on the roadway, which has a 100 km/h speed limit.
The prosecutor said evidence the jury heard concerning the impact of the collision shows the intention behind the alleged homicide.
At least two people who testified for the prosecution, including one who was more than 200 metres from the collision, said the impact sounded like a bomb had gone off.
One of the firefighters called to the site of the collision testified that the thing that marked him the most, after having previously responded to more than 200 incidents, was that Vincent somehow survived.
Another witness for the prosecution recalled that she checked to see if Campion survived, but immediately noticed that blood was coming out of his ears. Baribeau reminded the jury that the woman testified she held one of Campion’s hands and told someone at the scene that she “didn’t want him to die alone.”
When Vincent testified in his defence, he denied that he wanted to kill himself and said he was reaching for something that fell in his truck when it suddenly swerved. On Tuesday, his defence lawyer argued the collision was an accident.
Vincent said he did not notice the sound that the tires on his pickup would have made when it switched to the oncoming lane and went over the centre-line rumble strips. They are designed to alert a driver that they are crossing into an oncoming lane.
A witness who testified for the Crown said she heard the vibrating sound from the vehicle she was in just before the collision. Baribeau also replayed a video, recorded by a Sûreté du Québec accident investigator, that re-created the sound a heavy vehicle like a Ford F-150 would have made as it crossed over to the oncoming lane. The sound was very audible in the video.
“How could he not hear the sound of the vibrations?” Baribeau asked.
Superior Court Justice Mario Longpré told the jury to expect to begin their deliberation on Tuesday.