Judge convicts man who rammed police vehicle during wild chase

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SARNIA – A Petrolia-area man has been found guilty after trial of nearly all the charges he was facing after a Lambton OPP cruiser was intentionally rammed amid a stolen vehicle chase.

Cody Price will be sentenced later this year.

A three-day trial into the Dec. 30, 2022 incident was held in Sarnia in July and Justice Marnie Vickerd recently returned with her decision, where she found Price guilty of all the charges except for one the Crown previously dropped.

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Ontario Provincial Police said in late December 2022 one of their cruisers was intentionally rammed by a driver evading police. They published a wanted poster featuring a photo and description of Price, 33, and the list of charges including flight from police, assaulting a police officer with a weapon, dangerous driving, theft of multiple vehicles, breaking and entering, and breaching bail.

Price turned himself in on Jan. 8, 2023. In July, he pleaded not guilty to the charges.

“The accused, Cody Price, is found guilty,” Vickerd recently said after spending nearly 40 minutes reading her decision.

The Crown called six OPP officers to testify, including one who said he recognized Price, with whom he’d previously dealt, driving a white Ford F-350 Super Duty pickup truck toward them during the altercation that Friday morning nearly two years ago. Price, who is serving a five-year prison sentence for a $500,000 string of commercial-level thefts across Lambton County from earlier in 2022, did not testify.

But he called one witness, Jordan McBeath, who testified Price was working with him that same morning and couldn’t have been the person who committed the offences.

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The incident took place in a wooded area near a field in Lambton County around 9:30 a.m., but McBeath, who said he’d been close friends with Price for the previous five years, testified Price was with him in his workshop from 8 a.m. until about 4:30 p.m. He also only learned of his friend’s arrest from a Facebook post in early January 2023, he said.

“I question, if they were good friends with monthly visits, how would Mr. McBeath not know that Mr. Price had been arrested in early January?” Vickerd said.

The judge added the timing of the alibi was suspicious as it wasn’t disclosed to the Crown until October 2023, about 10 months later. Police first interviewed McBeath about this in December 2023.

McBeath told police and testified at trial Price worked for him for free for about 11 days in late December 2022. But Vickerd noted there was no evidence McBeath, who still expected Price there after Dec. 30, 2022, sent messages to Price when he didn’t show up. She also observed McBeath was inconsistent in the evidence he gave to police and at trial and there was no way to corroborate it. She called his evidence questionable.

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“I reject the alibi defence presented by the defendant,” she said.

But Vickerd noted that didn’t mean Price was guilty. The key was the officer who recognized Price.

None of the video surveillance from where the pickup trucks were stolen, OWS Railroad Construction and Maintenance Ltd. and a farm, clearly identified Price and no forensic evidence was found in either vehicle, on him or at his house.

One of two officers standing on a trail pointing rifles at the pickup as police tried to contain the area recognized Price as he had dealt with him multiple times in the past. The 16-year veteran officer arrested Price twice before, once in 2018 and again earlier in 2022, and also saw him at a restaurant about a month before the incident. He also spent a lot of time investigating Price’s cellphone, social media accounts and video surveillance of him through previous investigations.

The officer’s evidence was clear and straightforward and his description of Price from that morning was consistent and he didn’t contradict himself under cross-examination, the judge said.

Defence lawyer Ken Marley argued the officer’s description wasn’t detailed enough and his pre-existing relationship with his client wasn’t a good one, which may have coloured the investigation and caused tunnel vision, the judge recalled. The officer also could have been mistaken as he was in an emotionally charged situation.

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But Vickerd concluded the issues Marley raised weren’t persuasive and didn’t raise reasonable doubt about the officer’s recognition evidence. As a result, the Crown met its onus and Price was guilty of all charges.

Price, who was previously acquitted of charges of ramming an OPP cruiser in 2015, will be sentenced just before Christmas. He  initially was released in late April 2023 on a $40,000 bail plan but he’s been back in jail since he was found guilty in the $500,000 theft case last year.

tbridge@postmedia.com

@ObserverTerry

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