CALGARY — A man accused of ramming his truck into a crowd of people outside an Alberta bar, killing a young man, denied making a beeline for the group and vehemently protested that he murdered anyone.
“There’s no way in hell I would get in my truck and run somebody down on purpose,” Jeffrey Leinen told RCMP Const. Kevin Jordan in a videotaped interview after the crash.
“It’s my life playing out right now. You’re making me out to be a murderer,” he said. “I’m not a . . . murderer.”
Leinen has admitted he was driving the truck that ran over and killed Nicholas Baier, 18, but has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder.
Witnesses say Leinen had just been kicked out of the Texas Mickey bar in Olds for fighting in October 2010. Baier, a student at Olds College, was standing with friends outside the bar when a pickup truck slammed into them. Baier was killed and another person was seriously injured.
Leinen, 25, was arrested a short distance from the bar after he crashed his truck. At first, his trial heard Monday, Leinen tried to blame someone else.
“Did you guys find the driver of the truck?” Const. Dan Meredith testified Leinen asked while the two were at the Olds hospital after the crash.
“Rob was driving my truck. I was the passenger.”
Later, Leinen asked to talk to police. He had initially been told he was charged with criminal negligence causing death and was visibly upset when he was informed he was facing a murder charge instead.
“I didn’t even know the person so why would I just go after some odd guy?” he said during the taped interview. “It wasn’t intentional. Why would I take somebody’s life? How would I feel if my own brother was gone?”
Leinen told officers he remembered gunning his truck following a scuffle at the bar and may have hit someone when he was trying to get away.
“I wouldn’t beeline my truck at anybody,” Leinen said.
“I’m not a violent guy at all. I’m a good guy.”
Leinen, who is from Calgary, told police he was in Olds to work — not to kill anybody. He admitted he had a fair amount to drink, mostly hard liquor, and that his memory was a bit fuzzy about what happened after the fight in the bar.
Meredith testified that Leinen didn’t appear very intoxicated at the hospital.
“I would say on my experience it would be pretty minor to me,” the officer said.
“He was with it. He knew what was going on.”