There’s no question Jody Lynn Sam of Salmon Arm drove the getaway vehicle used in a robbery of the downtown Vernon branch of Scotiabank on Aug. 6, 2010.
The question is, did Sam, 39, know she was actually helping her co-accused, Karl Nelson of Salmon Arm, commit a robbery?
The answer, according to Vernon Supreme Court Judge Peter Rogers is no, who acquitted Sam of a robbery charge Thursday morning following two hours of evidence and testimony from Sam herself.
Sam testified that on the afternoon of Aug. 6, she and her son, Wayne, 20, were heading to a beach in Salmon Arm and had borrowed her mom’s 2003 grey Ford Focus.
After a dip in Shuswap Lake, they were heading back to Salmon Arm when Sam’s son noticed Nelson hitchhiking on the other side of the Trans-Canada Highway.
“He told him to come across the road and get a ride with us,” said Sam while being questioned by her lawyer, Don Campbell. “It’s a custom for natives to pick up other natives when they are hitchhiking.”
Knowing the man they picked up as being in a relationship, and having had a child, with her cousin, Sam waited as Nelson got into the back seat. He said he needed to go to his bank in Vernon, that he had to go to the main branch because he had no ID and no bank card.
“I don’t have enough gas to get to Vernon,” said Sam. “He said if you take me to Vernon, I’ll give you money after he’s done at the bank.”
They stopped at a station in Salmon Arm, having borrowed a toonie from her son and finding loose change on the car’s console, and put a small amount of gas in the Ford Focus, then the trio headed to Vernon.
Shortly before 4 p.m. on Aug. 6, Nelson told Sam to park in the alley behind Scotiabank and wait for him while he went into the bank.
About five minutes later, he returned, got in the car told Sam and her son to “lock the doors and start driving.”
“He said, ‘Go left. Is anybody coming behind us?’” said Sam. “I’m like, ‘What? What’s going on?’ I knew at that point that something wasn’t right.”
With the co-accused in the back seat telling her to “drive faster,” Sam began to head out of town on Highway 97 towards Salmon Arm. He wanted her to “take a back road” to Salmon Arm but Sam refused, saying she didn’t have enough gas.
A police officer listening on the radio to a description of the getaway vehicle saw the car as he was southbound on Highway 97 and immediately turned around.
With Sam weaving in and out of traffic, according to her because of demands from the man in the back seat, police began to follow.
The Ford Focus turned onto a gravel pit road off Highway 97A, which is where the chase would end when Sam stopped the car after going several kilometres up a dirt road.
Police found a bag that had been tossed from the car along the dirt road. It contained money and clothes.
Nelson got out of the car and was in such an agitated state, according to Sam and police witnesses, that he would not comply with an officer’s demand to get on the ground. He eventually complied and was handcuffed.
Sam and her son were ordered out of the car and onto the ground, which both did without incident.
Crown prosecutor Howard Pontious hammered away at Sam’s story, asking her repeatedly why she didn’t stop the car and have her and her son get out with “all of the traffic in Vernon,” and “with a police car in pursuit?”
“I was scared, I was frightened by Nelson,” said Sam. “I didn’t know if he had a knife, or if he was going to choke me out.”
Judge Rogers believed Sam’s version, saying while it was true she drove the getaway car, it was in her culture to pick up fellow natives while hitchhiking, and that it was reasonable to believe she did not know what was going on after the robbery as she feared for her safety and that of her son while dealing with an agitated, imposing figure in the back seat of her vehicle, a figure who had just robbed a bank.
The trial for Nelson in this matter is slated to start May 2 in Vernon Supreme Court.
Sam had been in custody since August on the matter.
