Moving company employee Eldon Maytwayashing testified Monday he awoke from a slumber to find the five-tonne van being driven by his co-worker was in the middle of a grassy median on the TransCanada Highway.
And Maytwayashing told Crown prosecutor Vince Pingitore that driver Christopher Boucha had also fallen asleep after being on the job for more than 24 hours.
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Maytwayashing testified he and Boucha had started work around 7 a.m. on Aug. 10, and after completing a job in the lower mainland area of B.C. headed to Kelowna to pick up items to be dropped off in Canmore.
He said they also had a pick up in Edmonton on their schedule as employees of Two Small Men With Big Hearts movers.
But after the Canmore job was completed he said he and Boucha spoke to dispatcher Barbara Dupuis about getting a hotel room.
“I was telling her that we were driving for a long period of time now, we both needed rest,” the witness said.
“She told me that we’ve got to keep going to do the pick up.”
Maytwayashing, who said he periodically slept in the passenger seat, said at one time Boucha said he was fed up and began heading back to Vancouver.
But at some point he had a change of heart and decided to complete the job.
“He looked tired, tired at the time,” the witness told Pingitore.
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It was on their second trip from the mountains towards Calgary that tragedy struck.
“I woke up as we were in the median, the grass area. I yelled Chris’s name, tried to push him,” Maytwayashing said.
“He woke up scared trying to get in control of the truck and he headed into oncoming traffic.”
Their cube van collided with a small car and then a semi-truck.
But Maytwayashing also said it was particularly windy in that corridor, something defence counsel Chad Haggerty questioned him on.
“When we were driving you could hear gusts of wind blowing on the truck, rocking it,” he said.
Haggerty also noted when the witness gave police a statement nearly a month later he mentioned nothing about Boucha being asleep.
“I’m going to suggest to you that you didn’t tell police … he was just waking up because that’s not what happened,” Haggerty said.
“No,” Maytwayashing said.
The lawyer suggested his story about Boucha waking up before the accident was him “trying to understand why this happened?”
“Yes,” the witness said. “It happened so fast I can’t recall.”
The trial resumes on Tuesday.
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