GHOSTLY HALLOWEEN AHEAD IN BARKERVILLE: PAGE A20
PRINCE GEORGE THURSDAY October 24, 2019 Your community newspaper since 1916
PGCITIZEN.CA
PRINCEGEORGECITIZEN
CITY AWAITS RESULTS FROM CHINA TRIP NEIL GODBOUT Citizen staff ngodbout@pgcitizen.ca
CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE
BITE OF THE APPLE Nine-year-old Kassidy Heffernan bobs for apples on Monday during Huble Homestead’s Old-
Fashioned Thanksgiving Celebration festivities.
Judge acquits driver charged in CNC student’s death TED CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
A woman driving a pickup truck that struck and killed a College of New Caledonia student in June 2018 was found not guilty Thursday of impaired driving.
Michelle Denise Dac was acquitted in provincial court by a judge who found reasonable doubt that Dac was not impaired by alcohol at the time of the accident on Highway 97. The collision resulted in the death of Sandeep Kaur, an international student from India who had been attending CNC for two months. She died at the scene. Kaur was jaywalking when she tried to
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cross the two southbound lanes of Highway 97, north of the intersection at 22nd Avenue. Witness testimony established that Dac was observing the speed limit just before the accident and had no chance of stopping when Kaur ran out from in front of a white van stopped in the right lane. Dac’s view of the student was obstructed by the van as Kaur ran into the left lane where the impact occurred. In earlier testimony, Dac said she left her work as an injury adjustor for ICBC at 4:01 p.m. on the day of the accident. Police interviewed five of her colleagues at work, one who recalled giving her a hug to console her when she became upset at the recent death of her father and another
who spoke with her in the parking lot an hour before Dac left work. None of the witnesses detected any signs of impairment or noticed anything unusual. At 4:18 p.m., 20 minutes before the accident, Dac purchased a two-litre bottle of California Cooler and two smaller cooler bottles at a liquor store on 10th Avenue. In her earlier testimony, Dac originally testified she had no recollection of going to the liquor store after work. While waiting for first responders to arrive after the crash, Dac opened the rear door of her truck and took an empty cooler bottle and poured in half of the contents of a full two-litre See JUDGE AQUITS, page 3
Despite little to show from earlier trips to China by elected officials and bureaucrats, the City of Prince George spent nearly $8,000 to send city manager Kathleen Soltis and economic developer manager Melissa Barcellos to a business conference in Hong Kong in November 2018. While there have been no concrete benefits announced yet as a result of attending the Asian Logistics and Maritime Conference last fall, Soltis and Barcellos went “with the purpose of promoting Prince George as a location for an e-commerce distribution centre within the Prince George Foreign Trade Zone recently designated by the federal government,” wrote the city’s senior communications officer, Michael Kellett, in an email to The Citizen. Soltis and Barcellos met with seven companies and 12 individuals to discuss business opportunities in Prince George. They also met with two trade commissioners, including the senior trade commissioner from the Canadian consulate in Hong Kong, a potential investor in a data centre recommended by the B.C. government’s International Trade and Investment Office and representatives from CN Rail also attending the conference. Soltis and Barcellos were invited to attend the conference by Prince George Airport Authority president and CEO John Gibson. “They know the city’s development plans and specific investor information about the city that the airport does not know in detail,” he said in an email to The Citizen. “At this time, there is not an outcome that we can share publicly, as continuing discussions with proponents is extremely confidential.” There have been discussions and memorandums of understanding signed with Chinese officials in the recent past. As the acting city manager in 2012, Soltis joined a city delegation to Jiangmen with See CHINA TRIP, page 3