Efforts to Save Toronto Police Officer Detailed at Trial

Feb. 7, 2013
Toronto Sgt. Ryan Russell was fatally struck by a stolen snowplow two years ago.

A veteran tow-truck driver teared up and a police officer wept as they described trying to save Ryan Russell as he lay dying after being hit by a stolen snowplow two years ago.

To a hushed courtroom, driver Herculano Pereira described rushing to the Toronto police sergeant, who had been hit in the legs and head while trying to stop the snowplow on Avenue Rd.

"The officer is face down on the ground and there is blood running down from his head," he told an Ontario Superior Court jury Wednesday.

Pereira fumbled with his cellphone to call 911 and grabbed the officer's radio to try to phone police dispatch, he said.

"By the time the radio worked, they had answered 911," he said.

"They started asking me if he was breathing. Not that I could see," Pereira testified.

The officer's gun and Taser were on the road nearby. "They told me to roll him over on his back - and another police car showed up."

Through all Pereira's testimony, Richard Kachkar, 46, who has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and dangerous driving, looked down, as he has done for much of the trial, which opened Monday.

There is no dispute he drove the snowplow. The only issue is his state of mind at the time.

Pereira said that on that snowy, slippery morning of Jan. 12, 2011, he had heard on police scanners about a snowplow hitting cars and driving away.

At Avenue Rd. and Bloor St. W. he saw a police car with flashing lights following a snowplow north.

He trailed from a distance as they drove up Avenue Rd.

The snowplow stopped north of Davenport Rd. and turned to face southeast, he said. The cruiser came to a stop just south of it, facing north.

The cruiser reversed a few feet, then stopped and the officer got out.

The snowplow driver drove toward the cruiser, clipping its front end on an angle, straightened out and drove right at the officer, Pereira said.

"The officer started walking backwards trying to get out of the way," he said.

Pereira said he heard what he thought were four gunshots.

"The edge of the plow hit his legs," Pereira told prosecutor Christine McGoey. "His whole body spun."

Russell fell backwards and the truck kept coming, hitting him in the head, then headed south, he said.

Motorist Hamid Azurbani said Russell shot three times at the snowplow as soon as it hit his cruiser. After the snowplow hit his body, it appeared to drag him on the ground, he testified.

Under cross-examination by defence lawyer Bob Richardson, Pereira agreed that had Russell's body fallen away from the snowplow instead of toward it, he would not have been hit in the head.

Toronto police officer Sarah Andrews described rushing toward Russell's body as she and her partner arrived, responding to an "assist PC" call.

She approached the tow-truck driver, who told her paramedics on the phone were instructing him to roll over the officer, Andrews said.

"I tried to roll him over and ended up rolling him on top of me and at that time I realized he was a police officer," she said.

"There was blood everywhere," she said. "I could feel a hole in the back of his head."

She said his eyes were halfway open. "I put my cheeks to his face. I didn't find a pulse."

She opened his jacket to feel for a heartbeat, but couldn't.

"I took his left hand and I held it and I kept talking to him and I told him he had to fight and hold on, help is coming," she said, weeping.

Russell's wife Christine and other family members, sitting in court, could be heard crying as well.

The trial continues Thursday.

Copyright 2013 Toronto Star Newspapers Limited

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