MANDEL: Taxi driver blames ‘automatism’ from seizure in deadly 2018 crash

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Blame it on automatism.

On a rainy November afternoon in 2018, Ines Puleio was in a City Taxi on Avenue Rd. on her way to Sunnybrook for her first radiation appointment. Diagnosed with breast cancer earlier that year, her family believed she bravely had the battle in hand.

But the 56-year-old’s fighting chance at life was stolen when Toronto Police say her speeding cab mounted the curb, almost hitting a bus shelter filled with people, swerved back into heavy traffic and slammed into a Ford Explorer stopped at a red light.

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Out of control, the taxi then climbed the curb, struck a fire hydrant and a large pole before veering back into the lane and hitting a TTC bus before finally coming to a stop.

When driver Gurcharan Singh emerged from his cab, witnesses said he appeared dazed and told them there was no one else in the car. In fact, Puleio was in the back seat, fatally injured.

“Such a beautiful, strong woman who loved with all her being fought a good fight only to have it unfortunately end her life this way,” her son would post after the tragedy.

Singh, 48, has pleaded not guilty to dangerous operation of a vehicle causing death. At his judge-alone trial Wednesday, his defence offered a novel reason for the deadly crash — stroke seizure disorder had rendered him a robot, or automaton.

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Singh said he’d blacked out and didn’t remember what happened. It was like he was “sleepwalking” with no control of his actions, testified forensic psychiatrist Julian Gojer.

“It was more likely than not that Mr. Singh’s actions at the time of the alleged offence on the 1st of November 2018 was seizure-related and not under his voluntary control. Such involuntary acts with no conscious control have been understood by the courts as automatisms,” the defence expert concluded in his report.

“It is likely that Mr. Singh was in a state of automatism at the time of his motor vehicle accident on the 1st of November, 2018.”

The defence of automatism has been much in the news lately, albeit in a different context. To much public outcry, the Supreme Court ruled last week that the law preventing the defence of extreme intoxication to the point of automatism was unconstitutional.

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Here, Gojer is blaming an undiagnosed seizure disorder. He partly based his assessment on Singh’s wife reporting two episodes in 2017 when her husband seemed “out of it” for a few minutes as well as his having two car accidents on the same day. His family doctor informed the registrar of motor vehicles of Singh’s “recent daytime seizures” in December 2017 and referred him to a neurologist.

The specialist concluded the scans showed no seizure disorder, court heard, but Singh did report a “full blown seizure” 13 months after the crash and was prescribed anti-epilepsy medication.

“If hindsight was 20/20, Mr. Singh should not have been driving in the fall of 2018,” Gojer testified.

He hypothesized that Singh was developing the disorder and suffered a brief “absence” or “complex partial seizure” at the time of the fatal collision.

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“There is no other reasonable explanation for why Mr. Singh drove the way he did,” he said.

The Crown suggested another possible explanation: that he was simply a reckless and dangerous driver who drove too fast and lost control of the car.

“I would not disagree with you that that is one possibility,” agreed Gojer.

According to data retrieved from the car, Singh was travelling 78 km/h in the 50 km/h zone but his speed increased to 85 km/h two seconds before the crash and the car then accelerated to 94 km/h at the time of impact.

Crown attorney Matt Bloch asked Gojer about witness accounts of Singh weaving from the curb lane to the outside lane and then back again before the crash, as well as driving on the sidewalk to pass vehicles and evading a bus shelter with apparent dexterity. He also replayed video from inside the taxi where Singh appears attentive and doesn’t show any signs of unconsciousness or seizure.

“People can also break the law and drive badly for other reasons other than seizures,” Gojer conceded.

The trial continues.

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