Mother says son ‘high’ hours before senior killed in Saskatoon crash

SASKATOON — The mother of a 17-year-old boy who was allegedly involved in a fatal Saskatoon collision says that just hours before the crash she begged a judge to keep her drug-addicted son behind bars to dry out.

The woman, who cannot be identified because of the teen’s age, told Saskatoon radio station CKOM that her son was in court on unrelated breach conditions shortly before Wednesday’s three-vehicle crash that killed a 70-year-old man.

She says her son, who suffered minor injuries, was high on drugs and she wanted to keep him locked up so he could get help.

Police allege the teen was driving northbound on Circle Drive  Wednesday when the car he was in struck a slow-moving piece of construction equipment, crossed the grass median and slammed into an oncoming car driven by the senior.

Police reported they had officers looking for the car after getting two calls about it being driven erratically before the collision.

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The teen appeared in court Thursday on four counts related to the breach matter, but police are still determining whether to lay charges over the crash.

He was to appear in court again on Friday.

“This had been planned for a long time to get him into detox to get him help. I kept saying, ‘I’m scared he’s going to kill someone,’” the boy’s mother told the radio station.

“He was slobbering. He was foaming at the mouth. I wanted him arrested,” she said, but the boy was not taken into custody.

The woman said that after court, her son went home, changed, wrote an angry Facebook post and got into a car.

She said the teen’s drug use started in the spring of 2015 and wasn’t a secret to those who knew him. She described how she found “plates of cocaine” along with rolled-up bills. She took him to a treatment centre, which worked for a period of time, but he refused help after relapsing.

“I couldn’t force him. He wouldn’t go, so I reached out to the authorities, to his probation officer. That’s how it started,” she said.

“I said, ‘My son is a drug addict. It’s getting worse again. I don’t know what to do.’ The school knew he was high last year.”

She said the judge at Wednesday’s hearing asked her if the boy was high and the Crown appeared to acknowledge the teen’s intoxicated state.

“They adjourned the court because he was too high, because they couldn’t deal with it, but they let him walk — he was stumbling.”

She had hoped her son might be arrested right after his appearance. Under his court-ordered conditions, the teen is not to take drugs or alcohol, but his mother said the probation officer left prior to the hearing and didn’t speak on the boy’s state.

“All these people are leaving and I’m thinking, ‘Am I the only freaking person in this courtroom who cares?’” said the woman, who added she was shocked by how the judge ignored her concerns.

The driver of the second car died at the scene and rescue crews needed hydraulic cutters to pull his body from the wreckage.

(CKOM, The Canadian Press)

CKOM, The Canadian Press