Full story here at the Toronto Star.
The description of the bicyclist’s actions certainly appear to allow for a defense.
I caught the end of the story on CBC today and wanted to hear more details. Now that I have, I agree with you–I’m not entirely ready to call it outright murder. But I agree that it was reckless and, after Sheppard fell off, heartless.
That link doesn’t seem to work for me.
“Used to be A/G” = now has another portfolio? Or is no longer in government/Parliament?
He left provincial politics a couple of months ago. He was AG for four years (2003-3007). The Premier had moved him from AG to Minister of Aboriginal Affairs in a Cabinet shuffle in 2007. This spring he announced he was leaving politics.
Here’s his wiki article.
Yeah, this is a weird one, where no-one looks good.
He has the same name as my best friend in high school, too. Different guy, though.
How sad and strange.
I just don’t know what to make of it. The more that comes out, the more it seems like the cyclist was being a (possibly drunk) asshole to the motorist, but you don’t get to kill people for being assholes. Hell, one of the major challenges of being a motorist, cyclist or pedestrian is how you deal with stupid assholes.
I need someone to justify the charges of ‘causing death by criminal negligence’ and ‘dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death.’ instead of some form of homicide. If I use a baseball bat as a weapon and the person I hit dies, how is that negligent? I don’t see how it’s any different when a car gets used as a weapon. Maybe he’s going to claim he lost control of the vehicle?
I’m not so sure. Reading between the lines, it appears that there was a minor collision between the bike rider and the car; the driver of the car wanted to drive off, but the bike rider held on to the cart trying to stop him; and the driver drove in a very reckless way trying to knock the bike rider off his car.
If there was a minor collision, both should have stopped, and checked the damage, particularly to see if the bike rider was injured. Unless the driver of the car was unaware of the collision, he has no excuse for not stopping.
Even if he was not aware of the collision, there is no self-defense justification for driving to trying to knock the bike rider off the car. There was no immediate threat to the driver, and he could have rung the police on his cell phone to deal with the bike rider, if the bike rider refused to let go of his car.
It’s probably not murder – not enough pre-meditation – but I would think it’s manslaughter, even though I’m not familiar with Canada’s criminal code.
And this car driver was a person probably intimately familiar with the criminal code and with the traffic regulations: what was he thinking as he drove off with the bike rider on his car?
To say the least. From the NYT article:
It’d be an interesting turn of events if one could determine he was going at least 50KPH over the limit and thus fall victim to his own advocacy.
I think losing his car is the least of Mr Bryant’s problems at the moment.
It seems to me it would come down to a question of intent. From the linked Toronto Star article, it sounds like Bryant didn’t intend to kill Sheppard with his car. It sounds like Bryant’s intent was to “shake” Sheppard off his car. However, in doing so, Bryant operated his car negligently: no reasonable and prudent car driver would attempt to operate the car while someone is hanging on outside the car. This negligent action resulted in Sheppard’s death. Thus the stated charges.
Seems to me that he had lost his temper by that point, and was operating on anger instead of reasoning. I think it’s possible to do some terrible things in a fit of rage.
I agree with you; if a cyclist had grabbed onto my car and refused to let go, I would stop, lock the doors and call the police. I wouldn’t dare engage in any ‘brushing off’ tactics - that is an invitation for disaster.
I would say it could have been fear, as well. Locking the doors wouldn’t have done much - the convertible’s top was down. The courier had just spent time in a cop car an short time before, after relapsing into the sauce, and after harrassing an (ex?) girlfriend. He may have been in a drunk rage.
Not saying that’s what happened, of course, I have no idea - just another option…
This strikes me as a very likely possibility and seems to be the one glaring oversight in Giles’s otherwise good analysis of the situation earlier in the thread. If it turns out that Sheppard wasn’t a threat, then I’d defer to what Giles wrote.
But when you factor in the drunk rage (which is also supported a bit more by Sheppard throwing his messenger bag down on the hood), Bryant’s actions can be painted as the reasonable minimum required to escape an imminent threat. Under the premise that Sheppard was a serious threat, I really can’t think of a better alternative to allow for Bryant to provide for the safety of himself and his wife.
When Bryant finally does speak about the incident (and given his legal background, he’s clearly taking the safe route of waiting to speak), I suspect he’ll claim that Sheppard threatened his life. Hopefully, it’ll be the truth if he makes that claim, but even if it’s a fabrication, it’s believable enough given the other facts.
Even if Bryant had a reasonable belief that he was threatened, he had other courses of action available to him. He could have driven carefully to the nearest police station, or to a place where there were other people around who might intervene. I see from the map in one of the articles cited that he drive about three blocks, and finished in a hotel driveway. If he’d just taken Sheppard to that hotel driveway, where the hotel staff might have helped, then Sheppard would still be alive.
I suspect that Bryant was panicking, not because he was threatened, but because he’d had a collision with Sheppard’s bike, and believed it was his (Bryant’s) fault. To avoid the lesser issue of a collision where he was at fault, he jumped into negligent homicide. Out of the frying pan into the fire, as it were. But his reputation would have survived a minor collision with a bike courier: it probably won’t survive this.
Other posters have pointed out the apparent hypocrisy that Michael Bryant (the driver) was instrumental in passing laws allowing seizure of cars from drivers who were fast or reckless.
Let me add that this is the same Michael Bryant who was the driving force behind Ontario’s infamous pit bull ban. He broke up families and killed people’s pets because he claimed to believe (he can’t have seriously believed it – evidence doesn’t support it) that pit bulls are dangerously aggressive toward humans.
He himself has now killed a human in what appears to be, so far anyway, a dangerous bout of aggression.
I’ve already seen plans this morning for a T-shirt design: “Michael Bryant has killed more people than my pit bull ever will.”
Karma’s a female dog.
Maybe, maybe not. It seems that the info about Sheppard’s drinking was released very quickly and that the police are doing their darndest to smear the dead guy. In the long run, no-one is going to care how a high-class roller killed a possibly drunk cyclist.
He might get slammed for speeding. I don’t bet on much else.