
CORNWALL – A spokesman for Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) says last week’s head-on crash on Highway 401 near Cornwall doesn’t fall under their mandate.
SD&G O.P.P. say a member of the O.P.P. Highway Safety Unit had stopped a rental truck, when the driver fled, driving the truck west in the eastbound lanes before it collided with a pickup truck.
The SIU is an arm’s length agency that investigates cases involving police where there has been a death, serious injury or allegations of sexual assault.
The pickup truck driver had serious non-life threatening injuries, SD&G O.P.P. said.
SIU spokesman Monica Hudon told Cornwall Newswatch they were notified by the O.P.P.
“Based on preliminary information which included video, the SIU determined that the incident did not fall under the SIU’s mandate. There was no wrongdoing on the part of the officer involved,” Hudon wrote in an email to Newswatch.
The accused in the case, a 47-year-old man from New Brunswick, has appeared in a Cornwall court on 11 charges, including flight from police causing bodily harm.