Alison De Courcy-Ireland was charged with being impaired in 2015 accident that left former Canadiens player with a broken nose and foot.
The woman who was charged with impaired driving while she was allegedly behind the wheel of former Montreal Canadien Zack Kassian’s pickup truck when it crashed in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce more than four years ago will have to undergo a second trial in October.
Alison De Courcy-Ireland, 25, was supposed to learn her fate as far back as May 3, 2019, the date Quebec Court Judge Denis Mondor originally set to deliver his decision on the two charges she has faced since 2016; operating a motor vehicle while her ability to drive was impaired by alcohol or a drug and causing an accident while impaired that left Kassian injured.
Kassian, 29, never played a regular-season game with the Canadiens. The team obtained him through a trade with the Vancouver Canucks on July 1, 2015. Kassian was with the Canadiens as they prepared for the start of the 2015-16 regular season when a pickup truck loaned to him by a dealership crashed into a tree on Clanranald Ave., near the corner of Côte-St-Luc Rd.
The hockey player suffered a broken nose and a broken left foot in the crash. The NHL suspended Kassian without pay because he had violated the league’s substance-abuse program the night of the crash. Kassian was already in the program before he was traded to the Canadiens and during De Courcy-Ireland’s trial admitted he consumed alcohol and cocaine at his home in the hours before the crash occurred.
While Kassian was recovering, the Canadiens traded him to the Edmonton Oilers on Dec. 28, 2015. He is still an Oiler and was enjoying the best season of his NHL career when the league was shut down in March by the COVID-19 pandemic.
A truck in which former Canadiens player Zack Kassian was a passenger is towed away after crashing on Clanranald Ave. near the corner of Côte-St-Luc Rd. in Montreal on Oct. 4, 2015.
Photo courtesy of Steve Petrenko
When Kassian testified during De Courcy-Ireland’s trial in February 2019, he did so on a video linkup from a location in Edmonton to accommodate his hockey schedule. He will likely be called to testify again when De Courcy-Ireland’s second trial is held at the Montreal courthouse.
On Monday, Quebec Court Judge Mélanie Hébert set three days, beginning on Oct. 7, as the dates for the second trial.
The new trial was ordered by a different judge earlier this year on a request from the Crown after it was determined that Mondor, the judge in the first trial, was unable to deliver his verdict because he is suffering from an undisclosed illness.
On Feb. 7, 2019, Mondor heard the closing arguments of the prosecutor in the case and said he would deliver his decision in three months. On April 26, 2019, he sent emails to lawyers on both sides of the case informing them that he was unable to deliver the decision as scheduled on May 3, 2019.
The date was pushed back three times until a coordinating judge at the Montreal courthouse informed both parties that Mondor was ill.
When the date was delayed again to February, the Crown requested a new trial. While the time that the judge took to deliberate on the decision would not have counted if De Courcy-Ireland argued it had taken too long to prosecute her case the Crown conceded in its motion that it should take “appropriate measures” to bring a case to its end.
pcherry@postmedia.com