Could this happen to you?

A true account…
In a matter of seconds, *Melissa Wilson’s life was shattered. On October 12, 1985, the 25-year-old left a wedding reception shortly after 11:00 p.m. and headed west for home in dense fog and rain.

As she approached a curve, headlights bore down on her small red Pony. Within seconds, her mangled body was trapped in the car – and the driver of the other vehicle, 30-year-old *Jason Metcalf, was dead, the odor of alcohol emanating from his body.

Melissa survived the horrific crash but was charged and convicted of careless and dangerous driving, based on eye witness testimony of seven passengers in two vehicles that said she had passed their vehicles immediately before the crash as they traveled east. Melissa’s testimony never changed – she was heading west and had never turned back.

During the ensuing trial, reports were given that Jason had left home in his Honda to meet his girlfriend – he would have been traveling east on the highway. The witnesses said the reckless car that passed them in the poor visible conditions was similar in colour to Melissa’s. And the tangled vehicle remains showed a probability that the witnesses’ accounts were accurate. At the end of a drawn-out trial, Melissa was convicted and sentenced to jail.

Unbeknownst to both sides, Transport Canada had purchased the wrecks as part of its seatbelt safety study – and Zygmunt Gorski’s research team reconstructed the accident scene.

Mr. Gorski created detailed scale diagrams of each vehicle and then documented various points of mutual contact. This procedure allowed him to demonstrate with physical evidence how the vehicles made initial contact and how they moved in relation to each other while the crush took place. As Mr. Gorski described each point of mutual contact he demonstrated how both vehicles rotated in a counter-clockwise direction as they separated from each other.

This counter-clockwise rotation made it impossible for the vehicles to come to their final rest positions if the vehicles were traveling in the directions described by the witnesses and believed to be correct by the court. Based on the findings of the physical evidence, they determined the direction each vehicle traveled that fateful night – and 26 dreadful months after the crash, Melissa’s charge was overturned.

With Zygmunt Gorski’s relentless focus on the physical evidence, hundreds of disputes have been resolved…you could be next.