Mechanic sentenced for faked inspection

A mechanic who falsified an inspection certificate was given an 11-month jail sentence Thursday, in a case connected to a fatal 2009 crash.

Wayne Johnson, 51, was sentenced in provincial court amid an emotional outburst involving the family of a young woman killed when a Pontiac with a falsified inspection certificate crashed into a wooded area on Blackhead Road, leading out of the Shea Heights neighbourhood in St. John's.

Kayla Reid, 23, was killed in the incident. Her friend, Natasha Stapleton, was found not guilty in November of dangerous driving, after the defence argued that Stapleton had accidentally knocked off her glasses in the seconds before the crash.

No evidence was presented to show that Johnson did anything that contributed directly to the accident.

Instead, he was convicted for breach of trust, forgery and for falsifying documents related to a phoney September 2009 inspection of the Pontiac. Reid was killed the next day.

Judge Colin Flynn said Johnson committed "a serious breach of trust" by conducting a fake inspection.

"If this trust isn't exercised properly, the public is put at peril," Flynn said.

Johnson was given four months for the breach of trust and related charges, as well as seven months for driving while disqualified. He has also been prohibited from driving for five more years.

The sentence triggered an emotional outburst from Kimberley Clowe, Reid's mother.

"My daughter is in the ground," Clowe called out. "No one is responsible. How is he not responsible? He started this. If he hadn't certified the car, it wouldn't have been on the road."