No Answers For Family in Linda Mindle’s Collision Death
We have been here many times before: A family member dies and then police refuse to provide even basic information about how and why that death occurred. In a news article published by Colton Wiens of CTV News kitchener it was revealed how difficult it has been for the family of Linda Mindle after she was killed in an angle collision at the intersection of Wellington Road 125 and Halton-Erin Townline on June 6, 2023.
In a quote taken from Darlene Cyr, one of Linda’s daughters, the Wiens article provided the basics of the family’s difficulties: “We’re just left here with no answers and no justice”. Wiens also wrote ” The family said it’s been difficult getting answers from the OPP about their investigation”.
Wiens wrote: “CTV News reached out to Wellington County OPP for an interview but were told because the case has not reached the courts police would not be commenting on the investigation”.
Facts like these are repeated numerous times when serious or fatal collisions occur and the rights of family members are not taken into consideration.
A police photo of the collision site was posted in the Wiens article and it is reproduced below. It can be noted that the photo was taken from a long distance and provided very little information about what happened to the two involved vehicles.
In the Wiens article the Mindle family’s photo of the involved SUV was shown and this is reproduced below. Without substantial experience in vehicle damage analysis it would be difficult for anyone to appreciate that there are questions that need to be answered about why Linda Mindle died in this collision.
In a typical, serious, angle collision, in the vast majority of cases, there is a vehicle that has direct damage at it front end and there is a vehicle that has damage in its side. In a high degree of cases it is the vehicle that contains direct damage in its side that produces the more serious injuries. That result cannot be surprizing because there is less structure in the side of the vehicle that protects occupants. When we look at the above photo it is clear that the Mindle SUV contains direct damage along its left side and no such damage at its front end. So, from a preliminary standpoint, nothing should be of concern. Yet the pattern of damage is not typical.
A vehicle that us struck in its left side in a high-severity impact by another, light-duty vehicle, should exhibit the characteristic impression or “high depth of crush” caused by the front end of the other vehicle. In other words, the front end of the other vehicle should penetrate into the side and there should be a recognizable imprint of the front end of that vehicle in the side of the struck vehicle. This is not what is obvious in the above photo. A closer look suggests that the front end of the other vehicle impacted the left-front (driver’s side) wheel area. Following this the other vehicle then rotated into the driver’s door area and then likely made further contact toward the rear of the left side, as is typical. Because the wheel area of a vehicle is stiffer less crush and produced and this is probably why the imprint of the other vehicle’ front end is not that visible. However, even though there is direct contact along the driver’s door of the Mindle SUV there is no major intrusion (crush) into that door. And this result is common whenever the initial contact is made at the left-front wheel. In a scenario like this, the threat to the driver’s life is lessened. With proper seat-belt use and airbag deployment the likelihood of survival in this scenario should be relatively high. So what happened? Did something additional occur during the SUV’s travel through the roadside and during its rollover?
A single photo cannot provide the required answers to this question of why Linda Mindle sustained fatal injuries. Yet police likely have numerous photos. And, quite likely, police could have downloaded data from the Event Data Recorders of both vehicles. There is a lot of important information that can be examined from all this evidence. Even if the Mindle’s could not interpret that evidence themselves, they could retain an independent expert to do that for them – if they had access to that evidence. But as can be read in the Wiens article, none of that evidence has been made available to the Mindle family.
In these instances families of innocent victims are victimized a second time, by the agencies that keep key evidence secret from them.
Cherry St Gets New Bridges in Toronto Harbour But Deadly Old Bridge Still Exists
What will remain of the old bridge on Cherry Street at the Toronto harbour after new bridges have been erected and opened to the public?
The new bridges are exciting to look at, as evidenced by a couple of photos taken on February 3, 2024, shown below.
There has to be a greater recognition of safety problems that are not revealed by official entities such as police and news media. While much attention has been brought to the beauty and features of the new bridges, nothing has been mentioned of the dangers that remain on Cherry Street south of where the new bridges are located.
Third Driver Drowning in Vicinity of Cherry St of Toronto Harbour
Almost no one took notice when Gorski Consulting reported on two drownings that took place near Cherry Street of the Toronto harbour area this past December. After all there are far more important matters in everyone’s lives. So when a third driver was reported to have drowned near the vicinity of Cherry Street at Toronto’s harbour likely nothing will be done or changed. News media showed various images of the latest drowning site, images that cannot be shown on this website because those images are copyright. And police provided no images of their own. So it becomes difficult to provide an efficient comment about the dangers that might have existed.
What little has been reported is that on January 20, 2024, at approximately 0845 hours a collision occurred between two vehicles. CP24 News of Toronto reported the following:
“According to police, a 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee being driven by the 18-year-old was travelling west on Lake Shore Boulevard when he lost control and struck an eastbound 2023 Ford F150. Police said the Jeep subsequently left the road and plunged through three inches of ice on Keating Channel, a 1,000-metre waterway near the mouth of the Don River.”
What becomes puzzling is that news media quoted investigating police that the drowned driver was travelling westbound on Lakeshore Boulevard before the collision while the water of the Keating Channel was located across the roadway to the left. The eastbound and westbound lanes of Lakeshore Boulevard are normally one way only, and they are separated by a very large and complicated centre median. If the Jeep was travelling in the westbound lanes then somehow it had to pass through the median, then impact the eastbound Ford F150 Pick-up truck and then travel into the water. But there is also a guardrail here between the eastbound lanes and the water. So the Jeep would have to pass through that guardrail to reach the water. Guardrails are not installed to make the roadside look pretty, they are there for the specific purpose of protecting vehicles from dangers that exist beyond the guardrail, in this case, the water of the Keating Channel. So how could the Jeep successfully pass through the roadway centre median and the guardrail without being diverted from reaching the water?
When you are electrocuted by your toaster or poisoned by some prescribed drug it is certain that there will be an investigation about that. But if you drown because a guardrail malfunctioned are you out of luck? Do we now wait for the next driver who will drown, or meet some other method of demise, because no one bothered to Investigate? Where is the explanation for how the Jeep was able to pass through the centre median?
As no one has provided any useful examination of this latest drowning, we can only post some generic views of the site from Googlemaps which, up to now, has not threatened to sue users of their imagery.
Below are several views taken along Lakeshore Boulevard just east of Cherry Street. As best I can determine from the poor images of the background provided news media, this is likely where the drowning victim was travelling along Lakeshore Boulevard.
As shown in the above Googlemaps views, Lakeshore Boulevard has been recently under construction. We have no official confirmation but we hypothesize that due to the construction activity the westbound lanes could have been closed and all traffic was using the eastbound lanes. Thus this would provide the explanation how the Jeep passed through the centre median because it was already travelling on the south side of the median likely because of construction activity. None of this has been explained by police or the news media.
If there was road construction taking place, and if the eastbound lanes were mutually shared by opposing traffic, then it can be more easily understood how an impact could have occurred between the westbound Jeep and the eastbound Ford F-150 pick-up truck. However this still does not explain how the Jeep was able to pass through the guardrail and into the water of the Keating Channel.
On December 5, 2023 a Gorski Consulting article was posted on this site entitled “Second Incident of Driver Drowning At Cherry St Bridge At Toronto Harbour”. This mentioned that there were two drowning collisions after vehicles passed through a bridge railing. The sites of these drownings were only about one kilometre away from the present one. The investigations from both of these drownings provided no warning to the public that roadside barriers were being overwhelmed and that the barriers needed upgrading. Much like the previous two drownings it is our belief that nothing will be said, or done, in the present case. No one will mention that a guardrail should have prevented the Jeep from crossing into the water. No one will explain why the guardrail did not prevent the Jeep from entering the water. No one will explain whether construction activity had anything to do will the guardrail being compromised. Investigating police who ought to be documenting these dangers, and making them public, are not doing so. News media that ought to be recognizing that police was not making these dangers known are also complicit in hiding these dangers.
When investigating a situation where a vehicle has passed through a guardrail a very basic activity would involve taking a measurement of the height of the guardrail. This action would only take about 1 minute of the investigator’s time. This measurement is extremely important because it would illuminate whether the rail was too low. If this measurement was taken it was not revealed to the public. So this very basic inaction is causing the public to be uninformed about a potential deadly danger. The only warning being provided is by this infrequently visited website of Gorski Consulting.
We await any possible further information from police or news media and whether anyone will properly report these dangers to the public. If so we may add a further update to this article.
UPDATE: January 22, 2024; 2010 Hours
No new information has been reported by police and news media up to this time. However several typos have been corrected in the above text, generally in the last 2 or 3 paragraphs.
City of Hamilton Judicial Inquiry: True Accountability Likely To Be Replaced By Words?
Since the release of the final report into the City of Hamilton’s Red Hill Valley Parkway (RHVP) Judicial Inquiry the City has publicized that it is changing its ways. On its website it has posted a number of implementations including two that appear to be useful:
“The development and ongoing implementation of an Active Disclosure and Dissemination Policy, which makes clear how and when information such as consultant reports are to be made available to the public.
Development and implementation of a Council Staff Relationship policy.“
While, at face value, these changes appear to mean that the City will be more transparent, the actual meaning of the wording may be quite different. Implementation of an “Active Disclosure and Dissemination Policy” may only mean that, whereas previously information could informally be kept secret from the public, now there will be an official procedure whereby staff and politicians must keep matters secret from the public. And in a similar vein, the Council Staff Relationship policy may only set the official way in which staff can keep information secret from politicians and thereby keep it from the public’s knowledge. The comments that we make may appear to be unfair and distrustful but one must look back at the City’s history to see that distrust is reasonable.
A few months after the RHVP judicial inquiry was formed in the spring of 2019, and at a time when City representatives were claiming that they knew nothing about the burying of the Tradewinds report, another sandal erupted and we could see the representatives’ response.
In November, 2019, someone leaked some documents to the Hamilton Spectator newspaper about a sewage leak that had been kept from the public’s knowledge. Although City representatives claimed that they had reported a leak of sewage into Chedoke Creek, the truth was that they knew much more that they did not reveal. They knew that the sewage leak had been in existence for about four years and that an estimated 24 billion litres had been leaked. It was the timing of the knowledge and the magnitude of the leak that were never revealed. It was discovered that City politicians engaged in closed-door meeting where this leak was discussed and most of the politicians voted to keep that knowledge from the public. A few politicians such as Maureen Wilson, Nrinder Nann, John-Paul Danko and possibly Sam Merulla took the ethical road and disagreed with the secrecy but they were overruled. Councillors who voted for secrecy claimed that they took the “advice of outside legal counsel” which warned that the City would be expected to pay Provincial fines and deal with potential civil lawsuits.
An incredibly unethical decision by City representatives was taken when they voted to track down those persons who divulged the sewage leak documents to the Spectator newspaper and thereby to the public. That decision was eventually overturned but it laid the track and warning to future whistle-blowers as to the grave circumstances they faced when they felt they owed their allegiance to the public that elected them.
At a time when City representatives were claiming no knowledge about the burying of the Tradewinds report, we were subject to the comments of the Mayor of that time, Fred Eisenberger, who was of the view that keeping the sewage leak a secret was the proper thing to do. Eisenberger claimed that expert legal advice instructed him to proceed in this manner to protect taxpayers from future lawsuits. When Eisenberger wanted further discussions to be held in closed doors it was revealing that a white knight, John-Paul Danko, was quoted to make the following reply” “There’s a lot of crap around here, and not all of it in Chedoke Creek, and I do not agree to go in camera”.
Distrust must flow from these revelations. The RHVP inquiry placed blame on Gary Moore for the withholding of the Tradewinds report which contained damning test results about inferior surface friction conditions of the Red Hill Valley Parkway. But what unofficial communications occurred between elected officials, staff, and the City’s Risk Management Department that were never uncovered by the inquiry? As the Mayor and majority of councillors supported secrecy is it unreasonable that, in unofficial circumstances, they could have supported the burying of the Tradewind report? They were in favour of burying information about the Chedoke sewage leak, so what is the difference?
More recently there has been a new revelation about possible further misdeeds by City representatives. The Hamilton Spectator Newspaper has reported in a January 10, 2024 article ( “Court ruling puts dirt-dumping conspiracy lawsuit against Hamilton on hold”, by Matthew Van Dongen) that a $75 million dollar civil suit is under way which claims that City staff worked with a mob-linked person to allow the dumping of contaminated soil onto a property off Highway 5 in Flamborough. The described mob-boss, Pat Musitano, was subsequently assassinated. The Spectator article also described a meeting of Musitano with a City manager at a downtown restaurant – a scene cut into the minds of readers of some kind of segment from the Godfather movie. These descriptions are unproven in court but given the past history of the actions of City representatives what are taxpayers expected to believe? And this is a big problem. When City representatives have demonstrated that they are not protecting the public which they are supposed to represent and protect, seemingly unbelievable reports tend to become believable.
Despite what words the City of Hamilton posts on their website about how they are working to change, it will take a lot of work to bring back the public’s trust. And it will not occur from just words alone. There must be a demonstrated commitment to transparency and accountability to the public they ought to serve.
$27 Million Bill For Hamilton’s Red Hill Valley Parkway Inquiry – Who Won This Lottery?
It is bad enough that a technical report on road surface conditions of the Red Hill Valley Parkway in the City of Hamilton Ontario became buried. According to City of Hamilton politicians it became necessary to fund a judicial inquiry which lasted from April, 2019 until November, 2023. The costs for the inquiry were revealed at $27 million dollars. However no one expressed the opinion that a thorough break-down should be provided as to who was paid. At a minimum, those paying this large amount, which are the taxpayers of Hamilton, ought to be able to examine the invoices to be assured that the costs are reasonable. The City of Hamilton had originally budgeted $7 million for the inquiry. So how did this estimate grow so wildly out of control? When you have your roof replaced and you are given a cost estimate do you not examine your bill to have some sense of where the cost overrun came from? Seems the answer is no.
Here is a very basic assessment. Four participants were involved in the inquiry. Were they the only entities that submitted invoices for their participation? What about the judge and the inquiry’s legal team, what money did they receive for their participation? And there were a very large number of witnesses that were called to give testimony, were they also paid for their involvement? Do taxpayers not deserve a breakdown of these costs?
Once again the citizens of Hamilton are left to pay the bill with no explanation.
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