The B.C. driver implicated in an impaired driving collision that claimed the life of a Sundre man is back in court next week for election and plea.
Sean Terrance Letwin, a 30-year-old from Beaverdell, B.C., was charged with impaired driving causing death ó as well as impaired driving over the legal limit and driving while unauthorized ó following a crash last year that claimed the life of Henryk Yonza, 47.
Emergency responders had received a report of the collision at about 11:40 p.m. on Friday, April 29, 2016. The Sundre and Olds RCMP detachments, as well as EMS and the Sundre Fire Department, attended the scene on Highway 27 about 15 kilometres east of Sundre. Despite being airlifted by STARS to a Calgary hospital, Yonza succumbed to his injuries.
Police said the preliminary investigation had revealed that an eastbound vehicle, driven by Letwin, crossed over the centre line and collided with a westbound motorcycle, which Yonza was riding on his way home from Olds. Letwin was arrested without incident at the scene and charged with the offences, said police.
Following a judicial interim release hearing, Letwin was released on cash bail with several conditions, including abstaining from alcohol and not being found in the driver's seat of any vehicle, said police.
"These are the sad reminders of what happens when people drink and drive," Sundre RCMP detachment commander Sgt. Jim Lank previously told the Round Up.
"Everyone makes the choice whether to drive after they've been drinking ó even though they don't intend to cause an accident, especially a fatality ó but they have the choice."
Letwin is back in Didsbury provincial court on Monday, Jan. 16.
