A man who “miraculously” survived the fatal pile-up on Highway 440 in Laval in 2019 believes it was his desperate act of pulling over to the shoulder that saved his life.
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“I looked in my rear view mirror. That’s when I noticed the truck coming. I thought to myself: this is it! I thought I was going to die, that it was over”, testified this morning Jérémie Gobeil, at the trial of the truck driver accused of negligence causing death.
Immobilized on the highway due to a slowdown, the young man, who was driving a Porsche Cayman, immediately put himself in first gear.
“I put on the gas to get out of there,” he said. If I didn’t react within two seconds, it was over.
He managed to pull over to the shoulder when the tractor-trailer struck a series of vehicles behind him.
“I heard a big BAM!” described Mr. Gobeil.
By the force of the impact, his car was hit by another.
He still came out uninjured, “miraculously”, he said.
When he was able to get out of his Porsche, he saw the horror scene.
“I saw flames, he remembers. Near my vehicle, there was a body lying on the highway. He and another witness took his pulse, but “the gentleman was dead,” he said.
Four people died in this pileup: Gilles Marsolais, 54, Michèle Bernier, 48, Sylvain Pouliot, 55, and Robert Tanguay Laplante, 26.
According to the Crown theory, Jagmeet Grewal was traveling at 100 km/h at the time of impact, and never braked.
The driver should never have found himself behind the wheel of his semi-trailer, if it had not been for the serious fault of the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec (SAAQ), which gave him his license. to drive…by mistake.
Involved in a road collision in 2012 in the United States, Mr. Grewal had been declared permanently unfit to practice the profession of truck driver, in particular because of his psychiatric problems.
Despite these findings, he re-applied for a class 1 license, required to drive a truck, which he obtained.
At the time of the pileup, the trucker knew he was not fit to drive, according to the Crown.
He neglected to control his diabetes and took drugs affecting driving.
More details to come…