The province’s Special Investigations Unit has determined no wrongdoing on the part of Ontario Provincial Police officers in the death of a motorcyclist who wasn’t found until nearly two hours after his crash was reported.

Police responded to a call at about 9:30 p.m. on Sept. 9, 2018 about an abandoned motorcycle in the ditch at the northwest corner of the interchange of highways 407 and 404, the SIU said in a report released Thursday.

At 9:54 p.m., police spotted a 2008 Suzuki GSXR 600 motorcycle and drove around the area looking for the motorcyclist and any evidence of a collision, but nothing was found.

Police had the motorcycle towed before leaving the scene at 10:50 p.m.

At 11:12 p.m., police were called back for a report of a person lying on the shoulder roughly opposite to where the motorcycle was found.

“The (motorcyclist) told the police officers he had crashed his motorcycle,” the SIU said in its report.

Police, with the help of an off-duty firefighter, applied emergency first aid to the 31-year-old man who stopped breathing.

He was transported to hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 1:30 a.m. on Sept. 10, 2018.

Investigation later revealed there were stain marks from blood and flesh on the metal barriers.

The officers’ search area “appears to have been confined to something less than 100 metres from the motorcycle’s location, during which they found nothing of note,” interim SIU director Joseph Martino wrote.

The SIU report said the motorcyclist was travelling at speeds in excess of 200 km/h several kilometres before the crash scene. A reconstruction of the crash concluded that the motorcyclist hit a concrete barrier, and vaulted the rider into the air, the SIU said. His body hit a metal guardrail before landing at the bottom of an embankment, while his motorcycle kept going for about 230 metres.

“They had no reason to suspect the unusual sequence of events that saw the motorcycle travel, without an operator, more than 200 metres from the point of first impact across Highway 404,’’ Martino wrote.

The SIU was looking into whether police did enough to try to find the motorcyclist and whether a charge of criminal negligence causing death could be laid.

“One can imagine that the (motorcyclist) might have been found, and medical care administered, far sooner than occurred had the officers expanded their search and/or brought other resources to bear to assist in their efforts, such as a police dog or aerial surveillance equipment,” Martino wrote.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“Be that as it may, when one weighs what the officers did against what more they might have done, I am unable to reasonably conclude that their conduct transgressed the limits of care prescribed by the criminal law.”

The SIU is an arm’s length agency that investigates incidents involving police where there has been death, serious injury or allegations of sexual assault.

AZ Aileen Zangouei is a breaking news reporter for YorkRegion.com and its sister papers. Reach her via email: azangouei@yrmg.com

Read more about: