House arrest not enough, says mom
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Updated: July 20, 2009 4:27 PM
House arrest instead of a jail sentence is sending the wrong message to a hit-and-run driver, and to any others who leave the scene of an accident, says Chilliwack mom Lynn Weigel.
Weigel said she couldn’t believe the 12-month conditional sentence a provincial court judge imposed last Thursday on Ryan Mash, who fled after hitting her 14-year-old son Jeremy in a crosswalk at Brooks Avenue and Elm Street on Oct. 30, 2007.
“I’m frustrated, disappointed, that he got a slap on the wrist,” Weigel said Monday. “He’s gotten a three-month holiday, that’s what he’s gotten.”
Mash, 31, must serve the first three months “confined” to his Chilliwack home. He is also banned from driving for three years, and must serve 12 months on probation.
He also forfeited the black 1997 Ford Mustang he was driving the day he struck the teen riding his bike in the crosswalk.
Unless Mash breaks any of the sentencing provisions, he won’t serve a day behind bars, but Weigel says her son will be imprisoned by his injuries every day for the rest of his life.
“I would have been happy with three months in jail just to make (Mash) sit back and realize there is punishment, and other drivers realize there is punishment” for leaving the scene of an accident, she says.
“If he’d done the honorable thing and stopped, I would still be angry,” she said. “But it’s a little more forgivable than leaving my son in the middle of the road, not knowing whether he’s dead or alive. I’m frustrated and angry and disappointed.”
At sentencing, Judge Russell MacKay said Mash “bears high moral culpability” for leaving the scene of the accident, but noted there was no evidence he was speeding at the time, nor did he have a “particularly egregious” driving record.
The judge said a pre-sentence report raised a question about the sincerity of Mash’s remorse, but he believed his “devotion” to family and the support of friends and employer justified a conditional sentence.
Defense lawyer Joel Whysall had also suggested during an earlier hearing that a jail sentence would not deter other “law-abiding” drivers, who in a moment of panic flee from the scene of an accident.
But Weigel doesn’t believe a conditional sentence will act as a deterrent to Mash or any other drivers like him.
“At the end of it all, he had the biggest smile on his face,” she said.
However, a civil suit could mean Mash will pay financially for the accident and her son’s loss of potential income over a lifetime as a mechanic.
rfreeman@theprogress.com
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