User talk:Oprahtopics

Sarah McCarthy and Beth Kidnie

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• Victim: Beth Kidnie or Elizabeth Kidnie, Co-Steel-DuPont CEO [1][2]
• Time: April 4, 2000
• Places: Etobicoke
• Culprit: Pilar Hicks
• Notes: Hicks, an 84-year-old woman was charged with criminal negligence causing death and failure to stop after an accident. The Toronto octogenarian was heading home from her son's house when she ran a red light. Hicks lost her driver’s license and was sentenced to 15 months of house arrest. She struck a woman crossing on a green light in Toronto, did not stop when the woman banged -- twice -- on her windshield, and eventually dragged her nearly a kilometre to her death. A witness in another car blasted her horn repeatedly, but Hicks failed

to stop. The victim was a business executive and mother of three out for her nightly walk. Kidnie was hit as she crossed an intersection while she was taking a stroll after dinner. Her body was dragged for almost a kilometre. She was crossing the street on a green light within a marked pedestrian crosswalk when she was struck. Pilar Hicks was driving at night along a resident ial st reet at no more than 15 kilomet res an hour when she made a right turn, striking Mrs. Kidnie twice. The second blow caused Mrs. Kidnie to fall under the vehicle. Ms. Kidnie was out for her nightly walk and was crossing Bloor Street West at Markland Drive in Etobicoke on a green light when she was struck by a vehicle turning right. Kidnie, 42, was crossing an intersection when she was hit by Hicks and dragged for almost a kilometre. Her battered body came free of the car when the driver, Pilar Hicks, then 84, drove into her driveway. She had driven the short distance from her son's house at a speed not exceeding 15 kilometres an hour. The senior did not see when Kidnie slapped her hands on the hood of the car, nor did Hicks see Kidnie's body on the driveway after the car was parked. She was discovered 40 minutes later by passersby. The driver walked within 10 metres of the body to get from the garage to her front door. She was later convicted of criminal negligence causing death. Hicks later told police she didn't feel it when her 1985 Oldsmobile Cutlass hit something. Nor did she see the frantic woman banging on the hood. Not even after Hicks pulled into her driveway and got out of the car did she notice the mangled body lying in a pool of blood. Beth Kidnie was a senior executive at DuPont Canada. She is survived by her husband and three children. [3] Toronto police Det. Bohdan Sybydlo, a traffic accident reconstructionist, testified in early March that Kidnie's body became so hot from the friction that it left a long skid mark behind the car. He said the marks indicate Hicks must have swerved back and forth before pulling into her garage. He said he believed Hicks was trying to dislodge whatever was dragging on her car. The marks also indicate Hicks ran a stop sign and made an erratic and dangerous left-hand turn as she made her way home in the minutes after the collision, Sybydlo said. Kidnie's husband Peter also told the five-member jury he doesn't blame Hicks for the death of his wife. Kidnie was found dead at the bottom of Hicks' driveway. Hicks only became aware of the accident when police arrived at her door. [4] Black marks and a trail of human tissue on the roadway tell the story of an 84-year-old motorist who knew she had struck Beth Kidnie and tried to dislodge the body from underneath her vehicle, a coroner's jury was told yesterday. Detective Bohdan Sybydlo, a collision expert with Toronto Police, testified that while some of the marks were straight, others showed that the driver had swerved back and forth. "It resembled a driving manoeuvre a motorist would use to dislodge something under the car, such as a cardboard box," he said. Additional reports seem to indicate that the victim died as a result of being dragged along the road, rather than the impact itself. The judge at Ms. Hicks's trial last year for criminal negligence came to an answer before sentencing her to 15 months house arrest and a lifetime driving ban. "I'm satisfied you were aware that you were involved in an accident," the judge said. "You did not stop. You did not give your name. And you did not offer assistance." But why? She was said to be too emotionally fragile for it. Perhaps that very fragility was her impairment; when an emergency occurred that demanded snap judgment, she was unable to act. Three in 10 people over 80 suffer from dementia or other impairment of their thinking skills, conditions that have been linked to higher accident rates and limit their self-insight. "Passersby had no difficulty seeing the body, and in my mind neither did you," said Judge Gerald Lapkin when delivering his sentence. [5][6]

• Victim: Sarah McCarthy
• Time: November 25, 2005
• Places: Richmond, Ontario, Ottawa, Queens Way
• Culprit: Youssef Jaber
• Notes: