Moments after deadly crash recounted as Taman inquiry resumes
The Taman inquiry resumed in Winnipeg Wednesday, now shifting its focus to the multiple police investigations and the justice proceedings that followed a fatal car crash in February 2005.
Crystal Ann Taman, 40, died in 2005 after her car was rear-ended at a traffic light by Derek Harveymordenzenk, then an off-duty Winnipeg police officer who had spent the night partying with colleagues.
Harveymordenzenk, also known as Derek Harvey-Zenk, agreed to a plea bargain and received a conditional sentence of two years of house arrest for dangerous driving causing death after the Crown dropped charges of impaired driving causing death and refusing a breathalyzer.
The inquiry resumed Wednesday with testimony from Kathy Beattie, whose car was in front of Taman's at the intersection of the Perimeter Highway and Highway 59 just before the accident.
Harveymordenzenk's vehicle slammed into Taman's, pushing it into Beattie's.
The off-duty officer walked over to her right after the accident, Beattie told the inquiry. She asked him whether he saw who hit her, but she got no answer, she said.
"I just remember being left with the feeling that it was kind of odd that he didn't reply to me in any way, and just stared at me and then turned and walked away," she said.
Beattie said the chief of the East St. Paul Police at the time, Harry Bakema, came to her house and took her statement the day after the crash, but no other police officers followed up with her.
She expected to testify when the case went to trial, she said, but when she showed up, the prosecutor in the case, Marty Minuk, told her the Taman family and Harveymordenzenk had struck a deal. The officer would not be going to jail but would probably get "house arrest," Beattie said Minuk told her.
The inquiry, led by former Ontario Superior Court justice Roger Salhany, first examined the treatment of the Taman family by the court system and victims' services. That portion of the inquiry wrapped up in June.
The inquiry is now looking at the conduct of police involved in the investigation into the crash that killed Taman. It will also examine the conduct of Harveymordenzenk and other Winnipeg police officers before the crash, and how lawyers arrived at the plea agreement that spared Harveymordenzenk time behind bars.
The inquiry is a fact-finding mission, but it also leaves room for inquiry lawyers to call for another police investigation.
Salhany is scheduled to deliver a final report to the province's attorney general by Sept. 30.