London Ont. driver, 79, won’t go to jail over deadly Girl Guides crash

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Retired teacher Petronella McNorgan, the senior who drove her SUV into a group of young Girl Guides, isn’t a danger to the public “so long as she doesn’t drive,” the judge said.

Keeping McNorgan 79, off the road was a central focus of Superior Court Justice Pamela Hebner’s decision not to send McNorgan to jail but to sentence her to two-years-less-a-day of house arrest, the maximum conditional sentence available. The sentence includes a driving prohibition, followed by three years of no-driving probation – a decision that will keep McNorgan off the road for five years.

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“In my view, in order to keep the community safe from the offender, Ms. McNorgan must never drive again,” Hebner said before a crowded courtroom of both victims’ families and McNorgan’s supporters.

That was the longest driving prohibition available to Hebner on Tuesday, given the jury’s verdicts from the emotionally charged spring trial when McNorgan was convicted of one count of criminal negligence causing death and seven counts of criminal negligence causing bodily harm for the collision on Riverside Drive just west of Wonderland Road on Nov. 30, 2021.

An eight-year-old girl was killed and many of her friends and Guiding leaders were injured and traumatized after McNorgan’s 2017 Honda CRV barrelled through a red light, striking a Jeep, a lamp post, a small tree and a unit of Embers (formerly known as Brownies) walking along the sidewalk on their way to a park to play in the snow.

McNorgan’s SUV ended up travelling 300 metres, reaching speeds of 120 kilometres/hour, before hitting the lamp post and the children and ultimately came to rest on the opposite side of the road in a green space.

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The identities of the children are protected by court order. Their families declined to comment after the decision.

Even though McNorgan dodged a prison term that the Crown wanted, defence lawyer Phillip Millar said McNorgan maintains she did nothing wrong and they still plan to appeal her convictions and sentence to the Ontario Court of Appeal. McNorgan remains on bail pending the appeal – which includes its own driving ban – and stalls the beginning of her sentence until the appeal is dealt with in the future.

“It’s clear that Ronnie (McNorgan’s nickname) doesn’t see herself as a criminal,” Millar said after the sentencing. “I think the punishment to someone who is non-criminal, a conviction in itself carries a huge weight.”

What’s also clear is that McNorgan still refuses to believe the crash was her fault and caused by her confusing the gas pedal with the brake pedal. She continues to maintain, despite the overwhelming evidence presented at the trial last spring, that what caused the crash was mechanical failure.

“Ronnie’s position, a very stoic ‘I-will-not-lie,’ if she thinks she was pressing the brake, she is going to say she was pressing the brake until the day she dies,” Millar said.

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Most troubling was that even though McNorgan has been on bail conditions that keep her from behind the wheel, McNorgan took a test before her trial to make sure she would be able to drive if allowed.

“That concerns me greatly,” Hebner said.

Millar, who argued for probation and community service, said the judge’s decision was fair, although his client “thinks she should be able to drive.”

And it’s a reason why they are appealing. Millar called pedal misapplication “an error” and that the appeals court needs to decide if the tragic results arose from a criminal act.

“If person is making their honest best efforts in the circumstance and is unable to correct it, does that make them a criminal because of the tragedy?” he asked. ”If nobody had been killed, I don’t think there would be any charges.”

In her decision, Hebner was well aware of McNorgan’s continued insistence that there was no pedal misapplication, despite the evidence of five mechanics who found nothing wrong with the vehicle, that the brakes were never applied and the gas pedal was pushed to the floor.

The judge referred to McNorgan’s comments to the victims’ families at her sentencing hearing where she acknowledged her sorrow for what happened but also said she “would never intentionally hurt anyone and did my very best not to that night.”

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“The offender’s comments were moving and obviously heartfelt,” Hebner said. “However, it struck me something was missing. Ms. McNorgan did not acknowledge she was responsible for the harm done.

“The apology of Ms. McNorgan does not include an acceptance of full responsibility for her actions…. She expressed regret and remorse for the harm caused but does not comprehend that she was the cause of that harm.”

McNorgan’s “lack of accountability, remorse and atonement … has significantly exacerbated the impact felt by the victims and their family,” Hebner said after reviewing parts of the heartbreaking victim impact statements from the deceased girl’s family and the other families grappling with injuries, mental health issues, financial problems, shaky marriages and survivor’s guilt.

McNorgan repeated her stance that there was a brake failure to a probation officer who wrote her pre-sentence report and referred to the crash as “an accident.” The judge disagreed.

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“The jury determined this was not an accident, that Ms McNorgan was criminally negligent when she drove that night,” Hebner said.

But, when compared to other criminal negligence cases that involve drugs, alcohol, intentional speeding or bad driving by commercial truck drivers held to a higher standard of care, McNorgan’s level of blameworthiness was lower because her intent was to apply the brakes, Hebner said.

She noted the situation was similar to the only other pedal misapplication case either the Crown or defence could find, also in London in 2015, when a woman reversed into a south London Costco, killing two children.

The judge on Tuesday acknowledged that she had before her a 79-year-old diabetic and breast cancer survivor, a mother and grandmother, a longtime teacher and key caregiver to her ailing husband who came to Canada from The Netherlands more than 60 years ago. She has a large network of friends and admirers. She has no criminal record.

“She is remorseful for the harm that was done, but she does not appreciate that it was herself who caused the harm,” the judge said.

“A loss of liberty” was in order, but McNorgan was eligible to serve the sentence at home, Hebner said.

“Ms. McNorgan has otherwise been a law-abiding productive member of the society. She has done many good things. But she has done this one horrific thing that cannot go unpunished,” the judge said.

Part of McNorgan’s sentence included an order not to communicate with the young Embers.

jsims@postmedia.com

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