Gideon Fekre, who was driving his mother’s black Honda Civic on Dundas St. East in April 2015 when it swerved onto the sidewalk and killed pedestrian Kristy Hodgson, 31, took the stand to testify Friday at his trial.

Fekre is charged under the Criminal Code with dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death. If convicted, he faces up to 14 years in jail.

“I was coming down Dundas from the Eaton Centre,” he told the court. “My water bottle dropped, and I reacted, is the best way of putting it. I reached down with my right hand to pick it up, kept my left hand on the steering wheel.” He said he glanced down momentarily, and when he “looked up to get a visual” he realized “the direction I was heading was onto the sidewalk toward a woman and her dogs.”

He testified that he immediately began trying to avoid Hodgson by hitting his brakes and turning the steering wheel left, back towards the road. He was unsuccessful in avoiding her. He testified that he heard “a noise,” but was unaware he had collided with a truck on the road before his car came to a stop.

“I just sat in my car replaying what had happened,” he said. “Knowing I had just hit a human being.”

His testimony in the dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death trial ended four days of evidence and argument before Ontario Superior Court Justice Peter Bawden. Fekre was the only witness to provide evidence for the defence. On Monday, the trial will continue with closing submissions to the judge from both lawyers.

Earlier in the week, the court had heard from police officers who testified that Fekre’s car had left the roadway, crossed a bike lane, and driven on the sidewalk for more than 20 metres, at approximately 52 kilometres per hour, and that he had told officers at the scene he had taken his eyes off the road for “just a second” and that he had done so while trying to retrieve a water bottle that had fallen onto the floor beneath his feet.

Fekre’s own testimony did not directly contradict these key elements — he confirmed making those statements to police officers and confirmed the alleged speed was roughly what he remembered.

He added to the picture by his insistence on some points he claimed to recall very clearly. That he had not been holding or drinking from the water bottle while he was driving. That he had both hands on the wheel prior to the moment he “reacted” by looking down. That he kept the wheel straight as he reached down and looked away without turning the wheel toward the sidewalk even accidentally (“definitely not,” he said, when asked if it was possible the car had drifted right toward the sidewalk as he bent).

He said with apparent certainty that he had, before ever striking the sidewalk, hit the brakes firmly and turned the wheel to the left, and continued braking and turning the entire time until the car stopped more than 20 metres later. He insisted repeatedly that he had never bent down with his head beneath the dashboard line, demonstrating in the witness box how he merely leaned and averted his eyes before returning them to the road after “a moment,” a fraction of a second.

Most everything else of consequence he could not remember: under often tense cross-examination from Crown Attorney Scott Patterson, Fekre said he could not recall what his passenger had been doing prior to the incident. He could not recall where the water bottle had come from, or where it had been stored in the car (evidence showed the cupholders in the car’s console were full of other items) before falling at his feet. He could not in fact recall ever drinking from it. He could not recall hitting the truck after he veered back onto the road. He could not recall the exact spot on the road where his attention became diverted.

Repeatedly, he came back to the same few phrases: “I didn’t think about it, I reacted. In my reaction, I turned and braked,” he said at one point.

Patterson questioned him at length about his claim to have hit the brakes immediately. The court had heard from investigator and collision reconstruction expert Officer Dawn Mutis that there was no evidence of the Honda’s brakes having been applied, and a surveillance video played in evidence showing the moments before the collision showed the car mount the curb and drive on the sidewalk without appearing to slow down.

Patterson suggested that in order for Fekre’s car to have hit the truck in front of it upon reentering the road, he would have needed to accelerate since the evidence was the truck had not slowed down. Didn’t it seem obvious that would be the case, Patterson asked?

“This comes down to physics, it comes down to formulas,” Fekre said at first.

“The reason is that you accelerated at some point,” Patterson said.

“I did not,” Fekre responded. “I did not accelerate … I was turning and braking.”

“It was a driver’s reaction,” Fekre said.

The case hinges to some extent on what a “prudent driver’s” reaction would be under the circumstances. Earlier in the day, in discussing his reasons for rejecting a defence appeal to dismiss the charges by issuing a directed verdict, Justice Bawden had explained that if the very act of driving up onto the sidewalk established one part of the dangerous driving charge — in that it imposed an inherent and obvious risk to the public — the other portion of what would establish it a crime was whether the actions that caused this risk were a “marked” deviation from what a prudent driver would normally do under the circumstances. “Such a deviation that it merits criminal punishment,” he said.

Family members of Hodgson watching from the gallery were emotional, and felt certain that Fekre’s behaviour rises to that standard. “I hope he ends up in jail,” John Hodgson, Kristy’s father, said in the hallway outside the court. “Two things: you don’t drive up on the sidewalk, and you don’t kill people. If he gets off, it sets a precedent that it’s okay to drive on the sidewalk and okay to kill people.”

Hodgson’s longtime partner, Nick Siskopoulos, wiped tears from his eyes and audibly reacted with whispered disbelief in the courtroom at several points during Fekre’s testimony. At one point, Siskopoulos got up and “stormed out” of the courtroom, according to his own characterization.

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Just before, Patterson had suggested Fekre drove straight while the road bended because he had not been paying attention to the road ahead of him. “I never stopped paying attention,” Fekre said. “Are you telling me I’m not paying attention while I’m driving?”

That someone who claims he never stopped paying attention wound up driving 20 metres on the sidewalk, killing a woman and a dog, and then crashing into a moving truck, is not a matter of debate. Whether it was criminal for him to have done so is the question for the judge next week.

Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca. Follow: @thekeenanwire