In a split-second, everything changed for two North Vancouver families on a dark December night.
The family of Leanne Pickard, a 22-year-old university student who suffered a traumatic brain injury when she was struck in a crosswalk, lives with the knowledge that their daughter may never fully recover.
For driver Madeleine Beckett, there is now a criminal record, a civil lawsuit, and the knowledge that she can never take back the damage she caused.
Beckett, 25, was handed a nine-month conditional sentence order, including six months of house arrest, on Feb. 11 after pleading guilty in North Vancouver provincial court to failing to stop at the scene of an accident with a person. Beckett was also banned from driving for two years.
In the moments before the accident happened, on Dec. 4, 2013, Beckett was driving back from her parents’ to her home in North Vancouver at around 8:20 p.m. Something fell off the passenger seat next to her and Beckett momentarily took her eyes off the road.
Pickard, a Simon Fraser University student, was walking in a marked crosswalk at 17th Street and Grand Boulevard, when she was hit by Beckett’s vehicle. The impact broke the windshield. Pickard was thrown over the top of the car and landed about 20 feet away.
Another driver who saw the accident called 9-1-1 and Pickard was quickly rushed to hospital. Beckett panicked and kept driving to her home about five minutes away.
As she was driving, a retired Edmonton police officer out walking his dog noticed her car with its broken windshield and, thinking it looked suspicious, called the licence plate number in to police.
Police went to Beckett’s home 15 minutes later where she admitted what had happened. “She said she had been driving and she’d been in an accident,” said crown counsel Brian MacFarlane.
Pickard has still not recovered from the brain injury she suffered, which has meant frequent visits to G.F. Strong Rehabilitation Centre, said MacFarlane. She still has difficulty moving the right side of her body and is having to re-learn how to speak, he said.
Pickard’s mother described the impact the accident has had on the family in a victim impact statement, saying their lives would never be the same.
Beckett also filed an apology letter to Pickard and her family, saying, “I wish there was something I could do to give back everything I’ve taken from you.”
There was no indication that speed or alcohol were factors in the accident.
Outside the court, MacFarlane said one of the tragic lessons of the case is “just how quickly things can happen.”
He said it also underlines the significant moral and legal obligation drivers have to stay at an accident scene, even when they are panicking.
“It’s understandable why people react that way but you have to pull over,” he said. “You have to resist that urge.”
