Canadian Trainer Charged in Firefighting Student's Death

Nearly three years after the death of a Canadian firefighting student during a training session, the man who was in charge of the course is facing criminal charges.

CBC News reports that trainer Terry Harrison, who was conducting a course in ice and water rescue in Hanover, has been charged with criminal negligence causing death in an incident that took the life of 30-year-old firefighting student Adam Brunt on Feb. 8, 2015.

"I saw with my own eyes the criminal negligence that he did," Terri Jo Thompson, one of Harrison's students that day, told the CBC.

Thompson and Brunt were among twelve students participating in the two-day rescue training course run by Harrison and his company, Herschel Rescue Training Services.

On the day of the tragic incident, students were traveling down the Saugeen River near a dam when Brunt's survival suit got caught on a piece of metal.

Brunt remained underwater for fifteen minutes, and Thompson said Harrison did not have any life-saving equipment or a cell phone and that students had to flag down cars to get help.

Following Brunt's death, Hanover Police carried out an investigation that did not result in any charges.

"So it sort of snuck up on us in the end that all of a sudden it was just, wham, we're not charging. We just don't think we have enough," Adam's father Al Brunt told the CBC.

Thompson, however, promised the family that she would pursue the matter. In Ontario, citizens who believe a crime has been committed can argue their case in front of a judge or justice of the peace.

"I just felt that if there was one person to pursue this course of a private prosecution it was the person that was there with him in his last moments," Thompson said.

Several hearings took place in Walkerton, Ontario, between July and December of this year, and on Dec. 5, a justice of the peace agreed there was enough evidence to charge Harrison.

After Brunt's death, his family discovered that Harrison had been involved in another deadly training exercise in January 2010 when volunteer firefighter Gary Kendall died after becoming trapped under a fast-moving ice floe in waters near Sarnia, Ontario.

According to CBC News, Harrison is expected to make his first court appearance Jan. 24 in Walkerton.