Witness: Berto was 'aggressively trying to pick a fight' at Pine Plaza

Shortly before driving over Paul VanderGriendt with the oversized knobby tires of his pickup truck, Nicholas Robert Berto sat down next to Jessica Traynor at the Harp Bar & Grill and proceeded to chat her up.

Berto, then 18, told Traynor about the $10,000 lift kit he'd recently installed on his 2007 GMC Sierra pickup.

He invited her outside to see it.

Traynor, a 25-year-old airline pilot who was back in the Sault for a retirement party for one of her former Sault College flight instructors, said she might take a look at it. Maybe later.

She interpreted Berto's approach to her as flirting, but wasn't upset by it.

"I wasn't mad. He wasn't aggressive," Traynor testified Thursday at Berto's trial on criminal charges of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing bodily harm and failing to stop to offer assistance to VanderGriendt.

Nicholas Gillanders, a 26-year-old Air Canada Jazz pilot, was also in town for the retirement party at Grand Gardens North.

Gillanders, VanderGriendt, Traynor and about 20 members of the local aviation community had left Grand Gardens and come to the Harp for an after-party.

Located in Pine Plaza a short distance from Sault College, the Harp is the watering-place of choice for many students and faculty.

Gillanders testified that he found himself playing pool against Berto and three of his friends.

By all accounts, it was a friendly match, ended with a handshake.

Berto then asked Gillanders if Jessica Traynor was his girlfriend.

In fact, Gillanders had dated Traynor for about four years, but that ended a couple of years ago.

He said he nonetheless told Berto he was still involved with his former flame.

Berto's surprising reply, Gillanders testified, was: "She's a good girl. I tested her out for you."

That crossed a line for Gillanders.

"He was being disrespectful," he told the nine-man, three woman jury.

"My attitude shifted." he testified. "He [Berto] picked up on that."

The two men then stepped outside, ostensibly to smoke.

""He was trying to tell me how to conduct myself at the pool table," Gillanders told the court.

Gillanders said he nonetheless offered an apology if he'd offended Berto.

The situation still didn't improve.

Jessica Traynor said that interactions between Berto and Gillanders escalated into something more like a debate, then more like an argument.

Then, it started to become physical, with Berto shoved against the Harp's exterior wall.

Traynor stepped between the two men.

"We don't want a fight here. Let's stop this right now," she declared, according to her testimony.

Berto, she said, responded: "You're right, this is stupid."

He moved on to confront other members of the group gathered outside.

"He was frustrated," Traynor said. "No one in our group was interested in fighting that night."

Gillanders said he saw a bouncer approach Berto outside the Harp, asking him to leave.

Berto didn't leave.

"He was aggressively trying to pick a fight, so far as I could tell," Gillanders testified

At one point, according to Gillanders, Berto smashed a beer bottle on the pavement and then walked, screaming, toward the closing-hour crowd with a glass shard in his hand.

Berto's friends intervened, Gillanders said, persuading him to return to his pickup truck.

Berto then drove his jacked-up truck in what Jessica Traynor described as "a lunge" toward the crowd.

Video cameras at Food Basics and a nearby Esso station show the pickup briefly stopping, then continuing, striking and running over VanderGriendt before speeding away across the parking lot.

City Police Constable Joe Poderys used the videos and a stopwatch to clock Berto's truck as it ran a red light and zipped across the Pine/McNabb intersection.

He figured Berto was 67 km/h over the speed limit as he crossed the intersection.

He testified if he'd witnessed that in person, he would have charged Berto with stunt driving, an offence that carries a $2,000 fine for first offence, plus up to six months in jail, a two-year licence suspension and a seven-day vehicle impoundment, no matter who owns the vehicle.

If Poderys had been sitting in his cruiser at that intersection at 2:25 a.m. on Mar. 12, 2016, he also would have slapped Berto with a $325 ticket for failing to stop at the light.

Gillanders described Berto's speed leaving the crash scene as "recklessly fast."

Much of Thursday's testimony involved questions from Berto's lawyer Bruce Willson about how security video works, and whether it can be used to accurately determine a vehicle's speed.

Poderys is trained to reconstruct traffic accidents, but he admitted he's not an expert on security-camera technology, which he conceded often records only when motion is detected and stores still images at intervals instead of continuously recording.

Willson argues that important evidence was not captured by the security cameras.

VanderGriendt lost the use of his arms and legs after the crash, which occurred just two days before he was to have been interviewed by Air Canada for a pilot's position with the regional airline Jazz.

He lives in Toronto, a quadriplegic, and isn't expected to testify.

The trial continues Monday.

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