‘Shocking and callous’

Man gets eight years for drunk driving death, other charges

A 26-year-old Kings County man has been sentenced to eight years in jail for killing a woman in a drunk driving crash in 2021 and fleeing from and striking a Bridgewater police officer with a vehicle less than a year later.

Joshua David Creaser was sentenced May 26 in Kentville provincial court after earlier pleading guilty to impaired driving causing death, flight from police, dangerous driving causing death.

It was in the early morning hours of Dec. 19, 2021, that an RCMP officer on patrol came across a yellow bumper in the middle of the road on Highway 201 in South Greenwood just before 2:15 a.m. Further up the road was a badly damaged yellow mustang that had left the road and crashed into a tree.

Madison Connors, 25, was a passenger in the car and was pronounced dead at the scene. Creaser was taken to the hospital with serious injuries, and charged in April 2022 after police analysis determined his blood alcohol level at the time of the crash was between .178 and .219, more than twice the legal limit.

Crown attorney Nathan McLean said Creaser and Connors were at a gathering where witnesses reported that Creaser had two or three beers before he and Connors headed to get food at McDonald's in Greenwood.

In reading her victim impact statement in court, Connors' mother, Monica, said her daughter’s death has “forever

altered what we now call our reality.”

‘HAUNTS MY DREAMS’

She said she often visualizes the collision, “and I wonder what her last thoughts were before she was taken from us. That vision haunts my dreams and makes me wake up crying.”

She said the pain the family has gone through since her death can’t be described in words, and “the empty, sickening feeling that you feel never really goes away.”

She said her daughter was kind, funny, sweet and had a smile that lit up a room.

“Sometimes I think about what she would have grown up to accomplish, who she would have become. I’ll never see her walk down the aisle at her wedding, I’ll never get to hold her children. These are the things that haunt me.”

She said is not the person she was before Madison died.

“I find it hard to see the good in any situation. I live my life not thinking anything really good will happen, but waiting for the next terrible thing to happen. … I wish for so many things: I wish I could go back in time; I wish my daughter was still alive, and not in a box in my living room; I wish I could tell her one more time how very much I loved her.”

OFFICER STRUCK

On June 12, 2022, while Creaser was on release condition after being charged in Connors’ death, Bridgewater police were called to a coffee shop at 10:30 p.m. by someone who spotted Creaser drinking in the cab of a parked pickup truck.

When police arrived, the truck left and drove down a dead-end street. When the officer got out of his car, the truck swerved at the officer. The officer was struck and fell to the ground, suffering a broken foot that put him off work for seven months.

The truck was found abandoned about 20 minutes away in Middle Cornwall. Creaser was arrested in Kings County the next day.

Creaser pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing bodily harm, flight from police and leaving the scene of an accident. A charge of attempted murder was withdrawn.

His lawyer, Ron Pizzo, said his client was trying to evade the officer when he struck him, and did not do so intentionally. McLean said the Crown’s position was that the swerving toward the officer was deliberate, but said that was based on the observations of the officer and he couldn’t provide more evidence than that.

Because Creaser fled, there was no evidence to determine his blood alcohol level at the time.

Creaser had one prior conviction, for refusing the breathalyser in December 2016.

ADDING UP TO EIGHT

The eight-year-sentence was a joint recommendation, and consisted of five years for Connors’ death, two years for the dangerous driving charge, and six months each on the other charges, all served consecutively.

Judge Chris Manning accepted the recommendation, along with one for one year and five months of credit off the sentence for the time Creaser has been in custody since his arrest last year.

He also imposed a 14-year driving prohibition to follow Creaser’s release from custody.

Manning said that Creaser’s actions in Bridgewater, both because he was on release from the other charges in driving away after striking the officer, were “shocking and callous” and showed “a completely reprehensible course of conduct.”