Driver pleads guilty in Campbell River crash that killed his passenger
CTV
The parents of a 21-year-old man who was killed in a crash in Willow Point in March of last year are hoping video surveillance of the vehicle travelling through the area will one day be released.
“There’s multiple videos,” says Kevin Kowbel. “It’s a highly surveillanced area of Campbell River that will be released. It’s powerful to watch and a lesson to be learned.”
Kevin says his son Dustin was picked up from their family home in the early hours of March 28, 2020. Within six minutes the car he was a passenger in had crashed into a tree.
The driver of the car, 23-year-old Griffin Lee Grant, pleaded guilty to impaired driving causing death in Campbell River court Thursday morning.
The plea came as a surprise to the Kowbel family, as a two-day preliminary hearing was about to get underway in the case.
“It doesn’t make it easy,” Kevin says. “It’s movement in the right direction on admittance of guilt and stopping the 17, 18 months of court cases; we see an end coming to at least the court side of things.”
Due to COVID-19 precautions, courtroom access was limited to the parents of both the driver and his passenger, as well as a single member of the news media.
An agreed-upon statement of facts was supplied to the judge by both the Crown and defense lawyers. It indicated Grant had been seen picking up items from a liquor store around 10 p.m. and then went to a private residence to consume them. He then arrived at Dustin’s home at 3:36 a.m., with the two men leaving the home around 3:45 a.m.
The statement said the vehicle then proceeded at a high speed north along the Island Highway at Willow Point, when it came upon the location where police were attending an un-related investigation of a possible commercial break-in.
