Photo: Jean Konda-Witte, Special to The Vancouver Sun
Source: The Province
BRITISH COLUMBIA - Victims' families were angry already when the inquest into the van-crash deaths of three greenhouse workers started Monday. By the time it ended Thursday, they were furious.
Before the coroner's inquest into the March 2007 triple-fatal accident on Hwy. 1 in Abbotsford, family members knew that the improperly licensed, untrained driver of the overloaded, unsafely equipped van had received only a $2,000 fine, a one-year driving ban and four traffic tickets.
During the inquest, they learned that RCMP had recommended 33 criminal charges against driver Harwinder Gill and her husband, Ranjit Gill, with whom she operated a labour-supply and worker-transport company. The most serious of the recommended charges--three counts for Ranjit Gill of criminal negligence causing death--carries a potential life jail sentence.
Crown counsel laid no criminal charges, in spite of the fact that Gill was carrying 17 people in a 15-person van, had no seatbelts for 15 of the passengers -- including four people on a makeshift lumber rear seat--had improper pressure in mismatched tires that included an illegal retread, and was neither licensed nor trained to drive a transport van.
"There's no justice," said Jagjeet Sidhu, husband of Sarabjit Sidhu, 31, who died at the wreck scene from a head injury. "I want these people who were responsible for that accident to go to jail."
Crown spokesman Neil MacKenzie said Thursday the accident was caused by a "momentary lapse" in Gill's driving, which wasn't sufficient for a criminal charge. Regarding the van's condition, McKenzie noted the van had passed an inspection slightly more than a week before the accident. RCMP Const. Vince Chand testified at the inquest that that inspection was "bogus," but MacKenzie said Crown could not establish Gill knew the van was mechanically defective.
Gill's lack of training and a proper licence for transporting people were not offences that warranted a charge beyond the Motor Vehicle Act, MacKenzie said.
The inquest also revealed that, although the Gills' company, RHA Enterprises, was fined $69,801 by WorkSafe B.C., they have never paid the fine, and WorkSafe does not expect to receive the money because the company was shut down.
During Harwinder Gill's testimony, she attempted to dodge all responsibility for the accident, casting blame on everyone from ICBC to her mechanic.
"They never said 'sorry' and even now they are making lame excuses," said Harsharan Bal, son of Amarjit Bal, 52, who died at the crash scene from lacerations to her heart and aorta from impact to her chest. "Labour workers should be treated like other human beings, not like animals."
The third victim, Sukhvinder Punia, 46, also died at the scene from severe chest trauma. Her husband, Darshan Punia, also attended the inquest.
The inquest jury's 18 recommendations included:
- Police should target 15-person vans with random checks to ensure proper licensing, seatbelt compliance and vehicle safety.
- WorkSafe B.C. should conduct random inspections of all vehicles used by labour-supply contractors.
Source: The Province
Van-crash inquest jury goes into deliberations
BRITISH COLUMBIA - A five-person jury has gone into deliberations at the coroner's inquest into the van crash deaths of three greenhouse workers.
The four women and one man on the jury are to make recommendations to prevent similar deaths.
Sequestering of the jury followed testimony by two husbands and a son of the three women who died in March 2007. The overloaded, unsafely equipped van, driven by an untrained and unqualified driver, collided in heavy rain with two trucks then flipped on to a concrete divider.
The family members who testified Thursday were angered to learn at the inquest that RCMP had recommended 33 criminal charges against driver Harwinder Gill and her husband, Ranjit Gill, with whom she ran the labour supply and worker transport company. In the end, Gill was charged only with four traffic offences.
"There's no justice," said Jagjit Sidhu, husband of victim Sarbjit Sidhu.
The two other victims were Amarjit Bal and Sukhvinder Punia.
Source: CBC.ca
3-death crash inquest told previous inquest 'ignored'
BRITISH COLUMBIA - The three farm workers killed in an Abbotsford, B.C., crash in 2007 would be alive today if the province had cracked down on safety following a similar crash three years earlier, a coroner's inquest was told Wednesday.
B.C. Federation of Labour president Jim Sinclair testified that an inquest into a similar crash six years ago also called for a crackdown on the unsafe transportation of farm workers.
Mohinder Kaur Sunar was crushed to death in the wreck of a van without seatbelts in July 2003.
The current inquest is investigating the deaths of three farm workers on the Trans-Canada Highway in March 2007.
Amarjit Kaur Bal, Sarabjit Kaur Sidhu and Sukhwinder Kaur Punia died and 14 other people were injured when the van flipped and crashed into concrete medians in the centre of the highway.
Witnesses have testified that the 15-passenger van had faulty brakes, bad tires, was overloaded and was equipped with only two seatbelts.
A coroner's jury and WorkSafe BC urged after Sunar's death in 2003 that the province review the Motor Vehicle Act to reinforce laws on seatbelt use, overloading and vehicle safety.
Demands labour minister act
Those recommendations were ignored by the B.C. government, Sinclair said.
"It's time that this inquiry, this inquest, and the rest of the province say enough's enough," he told reporters outside the hearing room in Burnaby.
Sinclair demanded that B.C.'s labour minister promise the findings of this latest inquest won't also be ignored.
"You say to the people of British Columbia … that if those recommendations come down, I'll enforce every one of them, because it's time to change this industry."
Reached for comment in Victoria, Labour Minister Murray Coell said he looked forward to seeing the recommendations, but said he could make no further commitment.
"There's an inquest on as we speak. It's government policy not to comment on things before an inquest," Coell said.
Source: Vancouver Sun
Seat belts may not have saved farm workers' lives, coroner's inquest told
BRITISH COLUMBIA - Seat belts may not have been enough to save the lives of three farm workers killed when their overloaded van crashed on Highway 1 two years ago, a police officer who examined the wreckage said.
"Yes, seat belts are important, but would we still have had three fatalities? Quite possibly. There was significant damage to this vehicle," Cpl. Kurt Rosenberg, an RCMP crash analyst, told a coroner's inquest into the March 2007 crash.
Three women — Sarabjit Kaur Sidhu, 31, Amarjit Kaur Bal, 52, and Sukhwinder Kaur Punia, 46 — died at the scene of the crash.
Fourteen others in the vehicle, including the driver, were badly injured.
The inquest heard Monday from van driver Harwinder Gill.
She said she had no intention to overload the vehicle, which was equipped to carry a maximum of 15 people.
She lost count of the number of people getting on in bad weather, she said.
Some of the passengers were made to sit on a rough wooden bench nailed to a metal frame in the rear of the vehicle.
The bench was so badly made, with nails exposed, Rosenberg called it "barbaric."
Only Gill and the front seat passenger had seat belts.
The inquiry learned yesterday the vehicle had originally been used by the RCMP to transport prisoners and the belts had been removed. It was later sold at auction to Gill and her husband.
Police experts said the seat belts should have been replaced when the vehicle was put into commercial service by the Gills as farm labour transportation.
The inquest continues with a commercial vehicle inspector testifying this morning, followed by a WorkSafe BC inspector.
Source: The Province [Dec 07, 2009]
Harwinder Kaur Gill blames others for 2007 Abbotsford triple-fatality
Gill's defences contradicted by evidence, herself
BRITISH COLUMBIA - The camera pans over the highway wreck, picking up detail after detail that suggest callous disregard for safety, and for human life.
Three women died when an overloaded passenger van carrying greenhouse workers crashed on Highway 1 in Abbotsford in March 2007.
On Monday, jurors at a coroner's inquest into the deaths saw the video taken at the crash scene. The blue van lay smashed upside down over a concrete highway divider, its windows blown out by the impact, blood spattering the ceiling and seats.
The van's tires pointed at the sky. Tread patterns showed the tires were mismatched.
Not a seatbelt was to be seen on any of the rear rows of passenger seats, but there was one for the driver, Harwinder Kaur Gill, who owned the worker-transport company and ran it with her husband, Ranjit Singh Gill.
At the back of the vehicle was a makeshift seat fashioned from bare lumber bolted and nailed to a frame. Jurors heard from a Mountie that the wooden seat--covered in shattered glass and smeared with blood -- blocked rescuers from pulling some of the badly injured passengers from the van.
Amarjit Kaur Bal, Sarbjit Kaur Sidhu and Sukhvinder Kaur Punia died in the crash. Harwinder Gill had picked them up before dawn, along with 13 other workers, to be delivered to a greenhouse.
Lawyers spent about two hours Monday grilling Gill. She had answers for every concern, and it was always someone else's fault.
Seventeen people in a 15-person van? Gill said she didn't know how many people were inside because a woman at the side door was letting the workers in.
Not licensed to transport people? ICBC had insured the van under her name as primary operator, so she believed she was approved to carry workers.
Mismatched tires, one of them a retread? Her mechanic put them on and said they were OK.
No seatbelts except for the driver and front-seat passenger? The mechanic said because ICBC classed the van as a bus, seatbelts weren't necessary.
Wooden seat? It was there when Gill bought the van--a former Alberta RCMP prisoner-transport vehicle.
Loss of control on the rainy, dark highway? A semi-truck had hit the van, causing her to lose control.
But her defences were contradicted by other evidence, and sometimes by herself.
RCMP Const. Vince Chand, who ran the crash investigation, testified that the RCMP would have never installed a wooden seat in a prisoner van. The Alberta Mounties had removed the seatbelts, he said, as prisoners can use them to strangle each other but, under B.C. law, seatbelts would have had to have been reinstalled for transporting people.
Chand and the driver of one of the two trucks that collided with the van both testified that the van lost control and hit one of the trucks before being struck by the other.
Inquest lawyer Rodrick MacKenzie pointed out that Gill would have known exactly how many passengers she was carrying because she was paid per passenger. Gill was forced to agree.
Though Gill professed ignorance about her need for specific licensing to transport people, she testified that she knew two of her company's drivers had such classification.
She testified Monday that she checked the tires with a gauge before she embarked the day of the crash, but jurors heard she'd earlier told WorkSafe BC she hadn't used a gauge.
RCMP recommended dozens of criminal charges against Gill and her husband. In the end, she was charged with four Motor Vehicle Act offences, pleaded guilty to driving without reasonable consideration and driving without a proper licence, and was fined $2,000. WorkSafe BC fined Gill's now-shut company, RHA Enterprises, $69,801.
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