SIU will not charge Durham police officer involved in serious Bowmanville crash

The Special Investigations Unit has cleared a Durham Regional police officer of any wrongdoing in an August crash that cost a motorcyclist his leg and sent his teenage passenger to hospital with multiple broken bones.

The crash took place around 7 p.m. on August 15. The officer was responding to a non-emergency call when he pulled up to the intersection of Nash Road and Green Road in Clarington, heading west.

According to the SIU report, as the officer began to drive through the intersection, a motorcycle passed an SUV at the stop sign and drove into the officer’s front end. The motorcycle went off the road, coming to rest in a grassy corner of the intersection.

After the crash the officer got out of the car to assist the others involved. He called an ambulance, with paramedics taking the 42 year-old motorcyclist and his 17 year-old passenger to hospital with serious injuries.

The passenger, a friend of the rider’s daughter, fractured her left femur, knee and spine. The motorcyclist had a leg amputated.

In his decision SIU director Joseph Martino said, the officer “had the right of way and could not have reasonably anticipated that a motorcycle would dart out from behind the stopped SUV, overtake it in the opposite lane of traffic, and enter the intersection without stopping.”

“I am satisfied there was nothing the subject officer could have done to avert the collision given the speeds and distances involved,” he concluded.