Man injured, car written off. Rear-ended by police cruiser

At about 2 p.m. on Thursday, September 29, Craig McKay, of Wawa, Ontario, was driving his friend's red Oldsmobile west on Cathcart Street.

He slowed at John Street and signalled to make a left turn.

Seeing no oncoming traffic and no one in the crosswalk, McKay began to make his left turn.

Just as he turned the wheel he heard the screeching of tires from somewhere behind him.

"I remember having a second to think, 'I sure hope that's not for me'," said McKay today.

The next thing he heard was a loud crash and before he knew what was happening the car he was driving had been pushed up onto the sidewalk on the opposite side of Cathcart Street and was facing the direction he had come from.

He was dazed but the smell of gas snapped him to alertness immediately.

Suddenly there were at least half a dozen police officers around the car and McKay was pleading with the one by his door to get him out of the car.

His door was jammed and he couldn't get it open.

"He went to look at something at the back of the car for a second and when he came back, I could see the panic in his eyes," said McKay. "He called out for help to get me out, and a bunch of people came to the passenger door to rip it open."

McKay, who was bleeding badly from a gash on his ear, crawled out through the passenger side door.

Dazed, he stood on the side of the street and looked around.

That's when he realized he had been struck from behind by a police cruiser.

A cruiser, he later learned, was driven by Constable Chris Carpinelli.

An officer approached him and asked him if he had heard the siren.

"I told him, 'No, all I heard was tires screeching and a big crash,' and then he asked me why I didn't look in my rear-view mirror," McKay said.

"I just remember it was hard to think straight with all those police running around there," he said. "No one asked if I was okay or anything. They just seemed to be really busy with other things."

Almost immediately after the crash, a police car pulled up across the south sidewalk of Cathcart Street at John Street, in front of where the car McKay had been driving had come to rest.

The Sault Ste. Marie City Police vehicle that hit his pulled up along side and on Cathcart Street.

Another police vehicle pulled up behind the scene, which was then effectively obscured from the view of passers by.

Police then secured the area and finally someone asked McKay if he needed medical attention.

"Yes!" I told them," said McKay. "I need to go to the hospital and get checked out."

An ambulance arrived shortly after that and, as a man with a camera began to approach McKay, police moved him away from the man and helped him into the ambulance.

McKay spent about five hours at the hospital undergoing tests and waiting for results before he was released at about 8 p.m. that evening.

During that time he wasn't surprised to learn the car he was driving was a write-off.

"The trunk was in the back seat," he said.

What surprised him most was the fact that no one from Sault Ste. Marie Police Services either contacted or visited him in the hospital to see how he was doing or to get a statement from him.

After being released from the hospital, McKay returned with his wife to their home in Wawa.

On Friday, a police officer called his home looking for him but he had been driven into the Sault to see a doctor, said his wife, Sheeshawn Sutherland.

On Saturday the couple were visited at home in Wawa by Traffic Services Constable David Lapish.

They invited the officer in and McKay sat with him, assuming the officer was there to get a statement about the collision.

But it didn't go as McKay expected.

He said he felt, at times, that Lapish meant to intimidate him or imply that he had done something seriously wrong.

"At one point I think he was going to arrest me," said McKay. "He was starting to read me my rights. I stopped him and told him I wanted a witness there. Someone besides my wife and I."

Lapish agreed and they waited while McKay contacted Michipicoten First Nation Band Council member Evelyn Stone.

Stone arrived in short order and Lapish explained the situation to her.

McKay said Lapish' approach also changed after the Band Councillor arrived.

He said the constable didn't continue to read him his rights and said he wasn't charged with anything.

McKay also said that Lapish told him they had found a few witnesses to the collision but that they wouldn't be using the testimony of those witnesses because they were drunk at the time of the collision.

But the interview has left McKay with a bad feeling about the collision and what may happen because of it.

"I didn't have any music on," he said. "The windows were up but I still heard the tires. If there had been a siren, I would have heard it."

Today, McKay and his wife were in town taking pictures of the car and the scene of the accident, and they had a chance to talk to a few people who were outside in their yard at the time of the collision.

All of them agreed.

They heard no sirens.

McKay is still in a lot of pain and has very limited neck mobility as a result of a severe whiplash injury he suffered in the crash.

It took three days for his ear to stop bleeding.

He has numerous bruises and contusions, and is still feeling the after-effects of the shock of the crash with sleepless nights and pain-filled days.

As reported earlier by SooToday.com, police are seeking people who witnessed the crash.

Now, McKay is as well.

He's also wondering why Carpinelli didn't just go around him to the right where there was plenty of room.