14 DAY TRIAL // 46-year-old Richard Kachkar is on trial for plowing over a police officer's body and leaving him for dead in Toronto, Canada.
The Star Phoenix reports that Kachkar hit 35-year-old Sgt. Ryan Russell with the plow, pushing him to the ground and running him over.
The defendant stole the plow from a landscaping team as they went on a coffee break on January 12, 2011, going on to crash it into several vehicles before killing the officer.
The defense claims that he was in an unstable mental condition at the time. Witnesses are set to testify about hearing him speak about Taliban technology and having a microchip implanted in his body, that night.
The prosecution argues that he intended to kill the policeman, steering the plow in his direction as Russell opened fire, trying to stop it.
“(He's) driving straight, no steering, no braking, no apparent effort to change course,” says Vance Cooper, a witness to the incident.
The officer was at the scene because he was responding to a 911 call about the plow. As the motorist noticed him, he did a U-turn and drove in his direction, while other lanes were open.
“I ended up rolling him on top of me and it was at that time I realized it was a police officer. [...] I put my right hand underneath his head and I could feel a hole in the back of his head. [...] There was a lot of blood pouring out into my hand,” recalls Sgt. Sarah Andrews, who was first at the scene.
“I kept asking for help on the radio and another officer finally came...He helped me loosen up his vest and I put my hand under his vest to see if I could feel his heart beating. He was warm, but I couldn't feel his heart beating,” she describes.