By paNOW

Top stories of 2013: Three lives lost to impaired drivers in PA

Dec 30, 2013 | 2:50 AM

It was a tragic year for three Prince Albert families who lost their daughters too soon because their vehicles were struck by impaired drivers.

Two of the victims were both pregnant at the time of their accidents, which happened in close proximity to one another.

Chief Troy Cooper with the Prince Albert Police service admitted that impaired driving charges have risen a significant amount since last year in the city.

“We had identified that as an issue in our community early on,” said Cooper. “And one of the ways we addressed it as a police service was to ask our patrols officers, our visible people on the street, to make sure that that was a priority for them, and they took that very seriously. We did see a reduction in people reporting impaired drivers with our Report Impaired Drivers (RID) Program.”

He said these deaths impacted not only the families but the community and the police force as well.

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“It rocked our community, it underscored the damage and the horror that comes with impaired driving,” said Cooper. “Our officers are members of the community and they take it, I think, home with them as well. We hope that the rest of the community does, because I called it a horror and that’s exactly what it is, the potential for damage to occur, from something so very preventable.”

On Jan. 23, one of the coldest nights of the year, a 30-year-old preschool teacher favoured by and who loved her students, and beloved friend and daughter, Chrystal Rivet, was killed when an intoxicated 21-year-old Craig Kopichanski crashed his vehicle into hers at the intersection of 28th Street and Sixth Avenue East while he was fleeing from police.

Rivet, a mother-to-be, had just purchased her first home. She had only recently discovered she was expecting, and was four months pregnant in the night of her death.

After the initial report of her death, comments poured in on the paNOW Facebook page with messages of sadness, remembrance and love for the lost mother. 

“She was the most caring, beautiful girl ever,” commented Trudy McMillan Baraniski, one of the first posters.

A close friend Stephanie Rowan, reached out to speak about Rivet.

“It’s very hard to sum up who she was to me with one post,” posted Stephanie Rowan. “Chrystal was the type of lady to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.”
Rowan had added that Rivet was the type of woman who always gave her time and effort to those who really needed it; she was a pillar in the Prince Albert community.

And her funeral showed it, with hundreds in attendance at Sacred Heart Cathedral where the remembrance of Rivet was held.

Her father Claude Rivet was a constant audience to every court appearance of her killer Craig Kopichanski.

He never failed to appear, even if the case was pushed ahead quickly or if Kopichanski happened to not appear that day.

And Kopichanski, who was never granted bail during his brief time in the court system, finally pleaded guilty to four charges in the accident which included impaired driving causing death and evading police causing death. 

Kopichanski was sentenced to five years in prison on July 19. He never chose to make a statement during his sentencing.

After the trial, Claude Rivet said no amount of time in prison would bring back his daughter, however, the sentence exceeded his and his wife’s expectations.

“We’re quite happy with that, not that it’s going to replace Chrystal’s life of course. Five years is not nearly enough. However, under the circumstances it’s more than what we expected,” said Rivet outside the courthouse.

Rivet vowed to be an advocate to push the sentence to a minimum ten years in prison for causing death while drunk driving.

This incident wasn’t the last of its kind in Prince Albert in 2013. Another incident would shatter the lives of the families of two more innocent victims. 

Just a week before Kopichanski was sentenced for his crime, a 21-year-old Prince Albert man, Jeremiah Jobb, allegedly drove through the intersection of 28th Street and 12th Avenue East around 2:30 a.m. slamming his truck into a vehicle and fatally injuring its two occupants 17-year-old Brandi Lepine and 21-year-old Taylor Litwin. 

The incident happened just six blocks from where Rivet was hit by Kopichanski.

Litwin was pronounced dead on the scene. Lepine was rushed to Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon where doctors attempted to save her and her three-month premature baby, later named Aurora.

The baby named, Aurora Sky Brandi Ledoux by Lepine’s mother, was the only one of the two to survive the surgery, but only barely and was immediately listed as in critical condition with a swelling in her brain.

Jobb was granted bail in August which had led to an emotional response from the family with one member pounding on the courthouse hallway walls and howling after the decision was handed down.

Unlike Kopichanski, Jobb pled not guilty to the charges of impaired driving causing death, amongst other charges, and his pre-trial has been pushed ahead an entire year to the exact date he allegedly was responsible for killing Lepine and Litwin, July 14.

Lepine’s mother had put up a memorial at the intersection where her daughter was hit, shortly after the accident, and visited it frequently with friends and family to pay their respects.

During the funeral for Lepine, her sister and friends spoke about the young woman who was taken too soon from them.

“She was happy, she was always trying to make everybody else happy before herself,” said Lepine’s 21-year-old sister, Lacey during the funeral in the summer. “She worried about everybody else, she really loved her baby.”

According to the last update provided to paNOW in the fall, Aurora Ledoux was still being held at Royal University Hospital and she had improved from her critical condition.

While speaking to a neonatologist at Toronto Sick Kids, paNOW learned that baby Aurora could face a host of various development issues due to her premature birth and injuries.

“Premature babies lungs are at high risk of having immaturity and as a result they don’t expand very easily, and they require often support with a ventilator to help them expand and they’re very prone to collapse,” said Dr. Paige Church.

As for Litwin, she was remembered warmly by her sister Jessica Litwin.

“She was a happy girl,” said Litwin shortly after her sister’s death. “Somebody would text her and would ask her, ‘hey, can you come pick me up, ‘ and she would always say ‘ya’ even if it was like all the way to Edmonton, she would go for a drive and pick her up. She loved her driving.”

Her sister said she couldn’t think of being without her elder sibling.

“So lost without her,” she said while trying to fight back tears. “I was by her side all the time.”

All three girls have been remembered in the community with various fund raisers and Rivet was immortalized with a her portrait on a guitar which was given to her parents by Paul Lomheim.

Impaired driving could be one of the many issues dealt with in the upcoming Alcohol Strategy Plan being put together by members of the Prince Albert Police Service HUB.

jbowler@panow.com

On Twitter: @journalistjim