Friend died | Victim killed in head-on known to family

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By DON MACPHERSON
macpherson.don@dailygleaner.com

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A Fredericton woman who drove the wrong way down a divided highway learned at the hospital that the motorist with whom she collided head-on was a longtime family friend, a court heard Wednesday.

Wanda Anne Christie, 61, of 196 Carriage Hill Dr., faces a charge of criminal negligence causing death in connection with a fatal motor-vehicle accident on the Vanier Highway on Dec. 21, 2007.

Her three-day trial in provincial court got underway Wednesday.

Among those testifying as Crown witnesses was Christie's son, Wayne Christie. He said he was supposed to meet his mother around noon at the Direct Charge Co-Op, which is located alongside the Vanier Highway.

He said as he drove along Prospect Street onto the highway through the intersection at Regent Street, he noticed his mother driving just ahead of him.

Wayne Christie said he pulled up alongside her when the road became a divided highway and honked his horn to let her know he was there, then he passed her.

He thought she'd follow him to the Co-Op, he testified, but she pulled off at the Kimble Drive exit.

He said he figured his mother just made an error, so he pulled over on the Vanier Highway to wait for her to circle around and get back on the road.

After a couple of minutes, he said, he figured she wasn't coming, so he pulled back into eastbound traffic on the highway.

That's when he saw his mother driving the wrong way in the westbound lane, on the other side of the concrete median.

He matched her speed and tried to warn her, he said.

"I honked my horn, I don't know how many times," Wayne Christie said.

Traffic was moderate at the time, he said. Unable to get her attention, he accelerated and tried to get to the Wilsey Road exit so he could loop around and head her off.

"At that point, it was too late," he said, noting that by the time he got to the bottom of the westbound ramp at Wilsey Road, the collision had already occurred.

Wanda Christie sustained a broken ankle in the accident, and when her son joined her at the hospital, he quickly learned that not only had the other driver died as a result of the accident, but that the victim was 61-year-old Gerald R. True, a close friend of Wanda Christie and her late husband.

"She was speechless ... She cried," Wayne Christie said.

Members of True's family were in court Wednesday, sitting on the opposite side of the courtroom as Wanda Christie and her family and friends.

Michael Hetherington, an Aliant worker who was driving into Fredericton from Lincoln on the highway, said he'd passed by the Co-Op around lunchtime when his passenger pointed out a car headed the wrong way down the highway.

Hetherington said he flicked his lights at the motorist and honked his horn, but the female driver seemed oblivious to the situation she was in.

He said after he passed her, he saw three vehicles in the same lane as Christie's car had near-misses with her, including one transport truck that had to veer out of the way.

She was travelling at about 70-90 kilometres per hour, he said, and traffic was medium to heavy at the time.

Emergency-room nurse Michele Tizzard testified that Wanda Christie told her about the accident.

"She said she remembered going down the wrong exit ... and hitting a car head-on," she said.

The nurse said she learned that Christie was taking a variety of medications, including the painkiller Dilaudid, for several health issues, including back pain and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The court also heard that she suffers from Crohn's disease.

Tizzard said she overheard Christie's son tell her she shouldn't have been driving and that Christie had agreed with him.

During his testimony, Wayne Christie said what he meant by that was that there'd been no need for them to take two cars - she should've just accompanied him in his car.

He said his mother is a cautious driver who has no restrictions on her driving privileges.

Const. David Cooper, a forensic identification specialist with the city police, took photos at the accident scene and at the off-ramps at Kimble Drive and Liverpool Street.

Under cross-examination by defence lawyer Patrick Hurley, he testified that at the time of the accident, there was no signage along the Kimble Drive off-ramp warning motorists who might be travelling the wrong way down that access point to the highway.

He also said a photo he took showed that the median sign at that Kimble Drive exit, indicating which side of the median drivers should remain on, was crooked and leaning left.

Conversely, there was a sign with a Do Not Enter symbol at the Liverpool Street ramp, he said, and since the accident, signage has been added to the Kimble Drive ramp to warn motorists about travelling the wrong way.

Hurley also questioned several witnesses about the lack of room to pull over on the Vanier Highway on Dec. 21, 2007.

He suggested that snowbanks along the shoulder made it impossible to pull over and that the area by the median wasn't wide enough for a car.

While Wayne Christie agreed with those suggestions, others witnesses didn't, indicating there was just enough room by the median to pull over in some areas.