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ONTARIO: Mother defends late son's memory after release of SIU report

Justin Wright had a rough past, but was changing his ways following a serious brain injury suffered as he sped away from police one fateful night

GUELPH - Heather Currie feels compelled to defend the memory of her late son, saying he had changed his ways following a horrific car crash as he sped away from police a year ago.

He was a good person, says Currie, and he was trying to help others avoid the path he had taken in life.

Currie recently read the news article about how the province’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) had cleared Guelph Police in regards to a single-vehicle collision that left a Guelph man with a life-altering brain injury last November.

That man was her son, Justin Wright. 

Although Wright was not named in the SIU report, Currie felt compelled to defend her son, who could not defend himself because a detail was left out of the report — that Wright died about seven months after the collision at the age of 30.

She was stung by a series of callous comments left on social media about the incident.

“They don’t realize the hurt they cause to families who have lost someone,” Currie said about people commenting on the articles online. “You go through enough to know you will never see them again, and then the comments they put out. They didn’t know.”

A Guelph Police officer attended the scene of a disturbance on Bagot Street at about 4:15 a.m. on Nov. 25, 2018.

Currie said her son was not a part of the disturbance, but showed up to the scene to help someone who he believed was being assaulted.

Wright had a criminal record, Currie doesn’t dispute that. Seven months before the collision, he was charged by Guelph Police with break and enter, utter threat, assault and two counts of breaching his recognizance.

Currie said he also did time for drug trafficking, but pleaded guilty and served his time.

He was once on the Guelph Police’s list of wanted persons. She said police interest in her son is the reason he fled the scene.

She doesn’t dispute that her son was speeding away on the night he was injured — she was shown surveillance video of his car shortly before the collision — but she disagrees with the SIU finding that police were not chasing her son at the time of the collision.

The report said Wright was driving about 130 kilometres an hour in a 60 km/h zone when he collided with a telephone pole, an action that sliced his car in half and sent the man to hospital with life-threatening injuries..

“The cop in the report was driving 89. You tell me that’s not a high-speed chase?” she said.

Currie remembers her son as a good kid who would help anybody. He played minor baseball and wanted to be a teacher.

“That kid could hit and run and that’s all he wanted to do, to be a baseball player,” said Currie. “I just envisioned him always helping someone, to be there for somebody.”

Wright’s life took a wrong turn. That led to some people writing him off, but Currie said a criminal record should not define someone. 

“Even when he was on his drugs, he would still help you. He would always make sure you had something,” she said.

After the collision, Wright was sent to a hospital in Hamilton unconscious and unable to breathe on his own.

Shortly before Christmas 2018, Currie received her ‘Christmas miracle’ when her son regained consciousness and was transferred back to Guelph General Hospital.

As he began to recover, it was clear that the damage to Wright’s brain included a total lack of short-term memory. He would often ask the same questions over and over again.

Currie said the one question he often asked after the collision is whether anyone else was hurt.

“I had to tell him so many times that he was the only one hurt,” said Currie. “He was relieved every time.”

Although Wright was never the same after the collision, Currie said he was trying to get his life back on track.

“People change. People have to remember that,” said Currie. “Yah, it might take a life-altering incident to make them change, but give them the benefit.”

She said her son took responsibility for the incident and pleaded guilty to a dangerous driving charge.

“Justin walked out and said he would never have to see the inside of a court room again. It’s like a burden had been lifted from him,” said Currie.

Her son wanted to caution other people from making the same choices he did, said Currie. He wanted to go to schools to show kids where they could end up if they followed the wrong path.

“He was told he can never do that because he had a record,” said Currie. “Once you have a record you can’t help anybody. You’re stuck doing nothing.”

So Wright did it his own way, reaching out to people he knew from his former life.

“He had to sit down and talk to people one-on-one, tell them, ‘hey buddy, you don’t want to go down this road.’”

Currie hopes that her son was able to help turn someone else's life around with those talks.

"If just one person listened to him I will know why he was taken — to help that person," said Currie.

Wright died in his sleep in June, about seven months after the collision. His childhood friends were his pallbearers.

“I had them all show up at my door — they came from Kitchener, from Ottawa — they couldn’t believe he was gone. They thought it was a mistake,” said Currie.

Three of the friends got matching tattoos on their arms of Wright’s childhood nickname.

Currie said she visits her son twice a day at the cemetery, once in the morning and once in the evening.

“I go there just to sit with him and ask him, ‘why, Justin, why?’”

Currie can’t bring herself to drive past the scene of his collision.

“I do everything in my power to not drive Silvercreek. I will go down Speedvale and go all the way around it — but I won’t go by there,” she said.

Currie also wonders why she had to read about the SIU findings from online news reports. She said she was promised to receive the findings before they were released to the public.

“They had my email, they had my phone number and my address. They had everything,” said Currie. “So why didn’t somebody come and tell me? Why are they making false promises?”

In a statement sent by email to GuelphToday, SIU spokesperson Monica Hudon said they attempted to contact the family on numerous occasions to share the Director's Report.

"Investigators attempted to phone the mother numerous times, as well as another family member. A copy of the Report was also mailed to the mother’s residence," said Hudon. "The family was in touch with the SIU once the Report was released, and it is at that time the SIU learned the phone numbers had been changed." 

Currie did eventually get to sit down with investigators to go over the report, days after the findings were made public.

Hudon told GuelphToday why the detail of Wright's death was not in the report.

"As his death was not related in any way to the collision, that information was not included in the report," she said.

Currie disagrees and said she believes his death was directly linked to the collision. She said samples of her son's brain were taken after his death to assist in determining the exact cause.

In the months since her son’s death, Currie has had to relive the details over and over again — from chance meetings with people who knew him as a child to cancelling dentist appointments.

She said the most common response to his death is disbelief.

Thanksgiving was difficult for Currie and her family, but now they have to contend with Christmas and her son’s Dec. 14 birthday.

“This is the hardest time and when people are being so cruel, it makes it even harder,”  said Currie. “I am so tired of people telling me I am strong.” 

- GuelphToday.com




Kenneth Armstrong

About the Author: Kenneth Armstrong

Kenneth Armstrong is a news reporter and photojournalist who regularly covers municipal government, business and politics and photographs events, sports and features.
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