Almost every night for nearly two months Lavern Jack has driven the section of the Channel Parkway where his son was hit and killed.
The father and the young man’s mother Dolly Kruger are desperately trying to find answers to questions that continue to haunt them about the night Francis Charles Kruger, 20, was struck by a northbound van at the Fairview Road intersection. The parents also believe there is someone out there who can provide some of those answers and bring a little closure to help ease their pain.
“When I arrived there (accident scene) there was a lady there, and she said: ‘I’m a witness, I witnessed the whole thing,’” said Jack. “But right then that wasn’t my concern, I thought the police we’re doing their job and taking care of it, I just wanted to find out about my boy.”
However by that time Francis had already been taken to Penticton Regional Hospital by ambulance which is where Lavern went next.
“When I got there he was still alive, still breathing but he wasn’t talking and I was there till he passed,” said Lavern. “He didn’t say anything.”
Afterwards the father was surprised when looking at the RCMP report the section where the names of witnesses should have been was blank.
He recalled the unidentified woman he is looking for as having a small brown or silver car and was still parked in the left turn lane on Fairview Road when he left for the hospital.
By not having the information Lavern feels the police unfairly laid the blame solely on his son for crossing against the light (as stated by the van’s driver) and the “suspicion” alcohol may have been a factor.
“I just really need to get ahold of her, I need her to call me, I can’t tell you how important this is,” said Lavern. “I don’t know why the police haven’t done more it seems like they’re brushing it off as just another drunken Indian killed on the road. Well, my son was not a drunken Indian.”
The 73-year-old driver of the van from Keremeos stated the victim — wearing dark clothing — just suddenly appeared in front of his vehicle when he was almost through the intersection with the light still green in his direction. However especially troubling to the mother and father was information contained in a letter to their lawyer from ICBC. It stated: “According to the motorist, when he (driver) approached the intersection his light was solid green and the amber warning lights were flashing.”
The warning lights alert oncoming vehicles of a pending change of the intersection signal from green to yellow, then red.
“If he (driver) was going 70 kilometres which is the speed limit there he would have been able to stop and should have been stopping because those amber lights are warning him,” said Lavern. “Even if a pedestrian is crossing against the light, if those amber lights are flashing before you get to the intersection you’re not even supposed to be there.”
At the posted speed limit the father’s research, that included information from the company that installs traffic signals, a driver would be in the middle of the intersection when it turns red. According to Sgt. Rick Dellebuur of the Penticton RCMP no other witness has yet come forward about the accident. The only person they did interview at length was a woman who was stopped in the merge lane, waiting to turn north off Fairview.
“She looked to the north and didn’t see anything and looked to the left —the south — and that’s when she notices something go flying through the air,” said Dellebuur. “The lady who was right there is saying in her statement that the lights were definitely green for him to go through and they were red so she couldn’t go.”
Reading from the driver’s statement the officer said the driver was travelling at “about 80 km or so” and that he may have seen the victim but didn’t think he would try to cross.
“Perhaps speed is a partial contributor but the major contributing factor is that he (victim) went out in the road,” said Dellebuur. “But had he (driver) been going 60 km the outcome would have been the same, the guy was alongside the road and he just darted right out in front of him.
“You as a pedestrian, a motorcyclist, everyone has rules to follow.” Lavern Jack is asking the woman he talked to that night to contact him at 250-809-2904 or RCMP 250-492-4300.
