DRIVER NOT GUILTY OF FATAL CRASH

A young Calgary man who smoked marijuana before causing a holiday highway
accident that killed one person and injured others limped out of court
Tuesday weeping after being found not guilty of impaired driving causing death.

Patrick Houlgrave, 23, was comforted by friends outside the courtroom while
overcome with the conflicting emotions of relief over his acquittal and
grief over those he killed and injured, his defence lawyer Rick Muenz said.

But there was nothing but grief inside the courtroom as friends and
relatives comforted the woman who lost her husband and the father to their
three young children in the accident.

"We are very, very sad knowing an innocent man can be killed by someone
smoking marijuana and that man just walks away," said Judi Yacyshyn, one of
the grieving widow's friends.

During the week-long trial that ended Friday, Court of Queen's Bench Justice
Peter McIntyre heard that Houlgrave was driving west on the Trans-Canada
Highway on Dec.27, 1997, when his truck went out of control, west of Banff
and slammed into an oncoming van.

The van's driver, Doug Harrison, 36, died at the snowy accident site.
Harrison's wife, Arlene Hunter, was badly injured, as were their three children.

McIntyre said evidence from a bus driver and tour guide following
Houlgrave's truck before the accident convinced him that Houlgrave was not
driving erratically and that his vehicle was likely thrown into the
eastbound lane after a tire caught some snow on the road.

McIntyre said he was also convinced by defence witness Dr. Barry Beyerstein,
a Simon Fraser University psycho pharmacologist professor, that the amount
of the active marijuana agent found in Houlgrave's blood was not sufficient
to cause a driving impairment.