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Witnesses describe scene of fatal 2016 collision

Delburne man on trial for manslaughter after being accused of causing collision
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A nurse’s aide supported fatally injured Stanley Dick’s head on her knees while she did what she could to help at a terrible collision scene on Highway 42 in August 2016.

Michelle Lytle said she was driving home to Trochu after working a shift in Lacombe when she came across the scene where Dick’s truck had hit the ditch and rolled, throwing him onto the road.

Lytle said Dick was lying face down on the pavement. His head was rolling back and forth, so she supported it with her knees.

”There was a lot of glass and a lot of blood underneath him,” she testified in Red Deer Court of Queen’s Bench Wednesday. He was breathing, but unconscious.

”He wasn’t responding to anything at all.”

A man she at first identified in court as Daniel Wayne Newsham, who is on trial for manslaughter for his involvement in the crash near Lousana, was standing nearby, she testified.

”He was just standing there.”

The same man had told her when she arrived that he had been following Dick when he lost control of his truck and it rolled.

Under cross examination, Lytle conceded she did not get a good look at the man who spoke to her amid all the commotion, and said she could not be sure it was Newsham.

Jordan Leonard Yasinski also arrived at the scene a few minutes after the collision. He recognized Newsham as someone he had seen around town. He was standing next to a police vehicle with two other men.

Newsham seemed “confident,” he testified. “He didn’t seem very stirred up by what had happened.”

Newsham told him he was with Neighbourhood Watch and had chased Dick from Delburne.

Defence lawyer Balfour Der pointed out Yasinski had a different take on Newsham’s demeanour when he was interviewed by RCMP the day after the collision.

Yasinski told police then: “It didn’t seem like he was like completely all there. He seemed shook up or off.”

He also told police he wasn’t totally sure all he heard at the scene had come from Newsham and not from another man who was present.

Der also pointed out Yasinski had said Newsham “said he was chasing him, I think.”

So he was not entirely sure the word chase was used, suggested Der. Yasinski agreed that could be the case.

Darryl Rinehart was Delburne’s deputy fire chief at the time of the crash and was called to the scene. When he arrived, a badly injured Dick was lying face down on the road. Someone had put a broomstick in his mouth to try to keep an airway open.

He spoke to two men at the scene who told him their truck was stolen, the driver had backed into their truck and they chased after him.

Rinehart could not identify Newsham as one of those men.

The trial continues Thursday, when an RCMP collision reconstruction analyst is expected to testify.