‘It’s going to affect me for the remainder of my life’

The young motorcyclist was lying alone in a ditch, about to lose his left leg. The off-duty cop who hit him is charged with fleeing the scene

As he lay in a grassy ditch somewhere off Highway 7, Stuart Sweeney knew two things: He was horrifically injured. And no one was coming to help.

Night was falling on the rural stretch of road near York Durham Line, between Pickering and Markham. And there was no sign of the driver who had just hit Sweeney while he was riding his motorcycle, catastrophically crushing his left leg, severely breaking his left arm and sending him flying off the road.

Using his only functioning hand, Sweeney found his phone and placed the 911 call that would save his life.

“I’m in so much goddamn pain,” Sweeney told the dispatcher, his voice shaky, after 7:15 p.m. on Sept. 29, 2019. It was a call that set off an urgent search by first responders scouring the darkened roadside.

Sweeney, 23, said he’d just been “smoked” by a vehicle, couldn’t move his left side and didn’t know exactly where he was.

“He’s not there now, right?” the dispatcher inquired, referring to the driver who hit Sweeney.

“No,” Sweeney said, later adding: “They must be hurt.”

Sweeney was rushed to Sunnybrook hospital, where his leg was amputated above the knee. He later learned the driver had left the scene of the crash altogether. He was arrested nearly four kilometres away and charged with offences including impaired driving and failure to stop and render assistance.

More upsetting to Sweeney: the driver was an off-duty York Regional Police officer.

“I was in disbelief. I couldn’t really wrap my head around it,” Sweeney told the Star in an interview. “I was like, ‘Are you kidding? And he left?’ ”

Last month, a Newmarket court heard closing arguments in the judge-alone trial of Nathan Coates, a police officer with 14 years on the job who is also charged with dangerous driving causing bodily harm.

Coates has pleaded not guilty and none of the charges have been proven in court.

For Sweeney’s family, the officer’s trial has been one step in an ongoing effort to move past the collision. But justice can never be done, Sweeney said, when any consequences Coates might face won’t compare to what he’s experienced.

“My leg got taken off. I was rehabbing from this for a very long time — for years,” Sweeney, now 26, said. “It’s going to affect me for the remainder of my life.”

“His job, hopes, dreams and prospects have changed because of what’s happened,” said Doris Sweeney, Stuart’s mother. “Absolutely everything in his life has been made more challenging.”

Peter Lindsay, Coates’s lawyer, said in a statement that his client “is presumed to be innocent and firmly says that he is innocent.”

“He has fought the charges in the proper forum of the courtroom and will respectfully await the court’s decision,” Lindsay said.

Last month, Coates’s impaired driving charge was dropped after Superior Court Justice Jonathan Dawe excluded breath sample evidence that indicated Coates’s blood-alcohol level was “well above” the legal limit. The judge concluded Coates’s Charter rights had been violated by fellow York officers, including when one failed to advise him of his right to counsel before taking a breath test.

In closing arguments at trial, Lindsay said the collision may have been caused by a “momentary lapse in attention” and that Coates left the scene because he was experiencing a concussion from the impact.

According to court records, the collision happened after 7 p.m. on Sept. 29, 2019, on a bend in Highway 7 near York Durham Line.

Sweeney, a long-distance runner who played Triple-A hockey, was on his motorcycle heading west from his home in Pickering to his Markham rock-climbing gym. Coates was going east in a Nissan Pathfinder, coming from a baseball tournament in Markham, court heard. YorkRegion.com reported that Coates’s teammates told court they had all been drinking after losing a game.

Crown lawyer Frank Giordano said evidence gathered by the accident reconstructionist demonstrated it was “abundantly clear” that the collision happened when Coates’s vehicle crossed the centre line and into oncoming traffic, striking Sweeney. Sweeney also told the 911 dispatcher that he was struck by a driver who’d been in his lane. At the time of the collision, Coates was driving 30 kilometres an hour over the speed limit of 70 km/h, Giordano said.

Court heard that after the collision, Coates kept driving another 3.8 kilometres on Highway 7 away from the scene. Giordano alleges Coates was fleeing but could only get so far in a damaged car, which was leaking fluid all the way from the crash scene. Coates, he said, was seeking to “evade liability.”

Coates’s lawyer said his client, concussed after the crash, pulled over voluntarily when the shock of what happened wore off. He said there was “substantial evidence,” including medical records, to show his client had a concussion.

In a letter filed in court, defence witness Dr. Ken Berger, a Torontobased medical doctor and lawyer, said that due to the concussion, Coates “likely did not have the intent to avoid criminal or civil liability by leaving the scene of the accident.”

Giordano urged the judge to reject Berger’s evidence, saying a full review of the evidence showed Coates “knew exactly” what his situation was immediately after the collision.

According to Dawe’s written ruling on Coates’s Charter challenge, Coates was arrested after an offduty tow-truck driver saw the damaged vehicle on the side of the road and contacted York police, reporting that he believed the driver was impaired. The judge’s ruling states Coates later blew above the legal limit.

Charter-infringing errors made by the officer’s colleagues — including failing to swiftly advise him he was being charged with a more serious driving offence than first told — saw Dawe exclude the blood-alcohol evidence, quashing the impaired driving charge.

“While this collection of police errors and omissions does not put this case at the highest end of the spectrum of seriousness, they cannot in my view be dismissed as ‘minor’ even though they were inadvertent rather than deliberate,” Dawe wrote in his June 1 decision.

During trial, court heard Sweeney’s harrowing 911 call from the side of the road.

Sweeney told the Star that as he lay in the ditch he could hear cars passing — hitting what he believes was debris from the collision — but not stopping. In the grass and off the road, which had no street lights, he was out of view. Hearing music coming from his headphones, Sweeney knew his phone had survived the impact and that he could call for help himself.

Throughout the 911 call, the dispatcher skilfully worked to locate Sweeney, getting him to describe what he could see around him and keeping him calm as his pain intensified and he grew increasingly distraught over his injuries. In a flurry of questions — about school, rock climbing, the height of the grass around him — she kept him conscious so he could tell her when he heard sirens, enabling her to direct rescuers his way.

“Yell if you can, honey,” she said, later telling him: “They’ve pulled over. Keep yelling.”

Sweeney called out until, nearly 15 minutes after he placed the call, paramedics and a York police officer arrived to help him.

To Sweeney’s parents, Stuart’s actions to save his own life were nothing short of heroic. Had he been unconscious, or passed out at any point in the call, “the story would be very different,” Doris Sweeney said.

“One of the very first thoughts that came into my mind was, we weren’t there,” said Vern Sweeney, Stuart’s father, becoming emotional as he described the night an officer knocked on their door and told them their son was seriously injured.

Vern Sweeney said Stuart’s “heroic” actions continued as he underwent multiple, hours-long surgeries to remove his leg and reconstruct his left arm.

“He is incredibly strong and resilient; otherwise he wouldn’t have made it to this point,” Doris Sweeney said.

Since the collision, following years of rehabilitation, Sweeney has resumed rock climbing. He’s enrolled at George Brown College to begin studying interior design in the fall. “Things are working out now,” he said.

But his injury has changed the trajectory of his life and brought significant additional costs.

They include the exorbitant expense of his prosthetic leg — it’s a more sophisticated design that enables him to be active, but health insurance covers only a small fraction of the costs, the Sweeneys said. The price of the leg is separate from the knee socket, which must be replaced more frequently, including if Sweeney has any changes in body weight, he said.

Court heard the Sweeneys have launched a separate civil suit in the case.

Coates has been suspended with pay since the 2019 collision, collecting just under $110,000 in both 2020 and 2021, according to Ontario’s Sunshine List. By law, police officers in Ontario must be paid while suspended unless they are convicted of a crime and sentenced to jail time, something Ontario police chiefs have fought to change for years.

Separate from the criminal trial, Coates will face a disciplinary tribunal under Ontario’s Police Services Act, where he could face penalties up to dismissal.

Coates’s profession has indeed made the ordeal more challenging for the Sweeneys, the family said. The oath taken by Coates as an officer “is all about serving his community and keeping people safe,” Vern Sweeney said.

“And putting others ahead of themselves.”

Dawe has reserved his judgment until September.