Family pushes for police to reopen investigation into deadly crash involving farm vehicle
CBC
The family of a woman who was killed in a deadly crash on Highway 17A in Delta, B.C., last fall is calling for police to reopen the investigation into the collision, saying the case should have resulted in criminal charges.
Joan Sherry, 70, was driving to work when her sedan crashed into the back of a farm vehicle travelling ahead of her on the highway around 9:45 p.m. on Oct. 1, 2021.
Sherry, a grandmother who was one shift away from retiring from her job as a taxi dispatch worker, was killed.
The farm vehicle — a bulky piece of equipment called a pea harvester — was going no more than 30 km/h in a 90 km/h zone. It had no working tail lights on the rear, no wide load signage and no flags, according to a police report obtained by her family and released to CBC News.
There are no street lights in the dark, rural area and there was no pilot car to warn approaching drivers.
The report said Sherry didn't see the harvester as she approached it.
"It's been the most horrible thing my family's ever been through," said Norm Sherry, Joan's son, speaking from his late mother's apartment in the Delta community of Tsawwassen.
"We want to prevent this from happening to anybody else."
Norm had dinner with his mother at her apartment the night she died. She left around 9:30 p.m. to drive to Aldergrove for her last shift at work before she retired to spend more time with her family.
"I said, 'OK, mom, I'll see you. And she turned right around and she went out and she drove down the road," Norm recalled.
He first heard from Joan's concerned supervisor after she didn't arrive on time for work. Around midnight, he looked out over his mother's balcony to see police cars in the parking lot and uniformed officers heading for the door.
"At that point, I had a feeling of dread," he said.
Highway 17A is a wide stretch of highway running through Delta, a low-lying agricultural city about 30 kilometres south of Vancouver. The crash site was less than 15 minutes from Joan's apartment, almost across from Delta City Hall.
The police report into the collision, citing a mechanical inspection, found the pea harvester was "in no condition" to be on the highway.
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