austintown Canadian trucker faces charge of vehicular homicide

By Justin Dennis

jdennis@vindy.com

AUSTINTOWN

Prosecutors on Wednesday recommended a vehicular homicide charge against the Canadian truck driver accused of running over and killing a man earlier this month at the Pilot Travel Center.

Austintown police on Wednesday filed the misdemeanor charge against Guillaume Pelletier, 23, of Quebec. A judge issued a summons for Pelletier Thursday, court records show. Austintown Police Capt. Bryan Kloss said county prosecutors are arranging with Pelletier’s attorney to bring him to the county for arraignment.

Arman Meco, a 29-year-old truck driver from El Paso, Texas, was killed just before 9:30 a.m. May 2 when he walked into the path of Pelletier’s moving tractor-trailer and was pulled under the truck’s wheels.

Kloss said investigators initially believed Meco had been walking between other tractor-trailers parked at the truck stop, which would explain why Pelletier didn’t see him, but video footage police obtained from a dashboard camera inside Pelletier’s vehicle “changed the perspective of the whole thing.”

The traffic report, which faults Pelletier, indicates his vehicle was moving about 4 mph through the parking lot of the Pilot center, 1150 Canfield Niles Road.

“Although [Meco] was wearing headphones and never looked to see if there was any traffic prior to crossing the parking lot, [Pelletier] had ample time to either stop or avoid the accident,” an Ohio Department of Public Safety report states. “The in-cab video from [Pelletier’s truck] clearly shows that [he] should have seen [Meco] walking across the parking lot.”

Austintown police turned that footage over to the Mahoning County Prosecutor’s office, which has chosen not to release it to media, Kloss said.

Pelletier later submitted to an alcohol and drug screen, which came back clean, according to the report.

Pelletier’s vehicle is owned by Couture Expressway of Quebec, which provided the camera footage from Pelletier’s vehicle after a subpoena.

Company representatives did not return calls for comment Thursday.