About three weeks ago, Noah Bristol was a few minutes late stepping into the Sarnia courtroom.
About three weeks ago, Noah Bristol was a few minutes late stepping into the Sarnia courtroom.
The 22-year-old Petrolia resident had been briefly held up while hugging and saying goodbye to his family ahead of what he expected to be at least a two-year prison sentence. Instead, Justice Anne McFadyen opted to adjourn sentencing the nearly 23-year-old farm laborer for hitting a Sarnia man with his own pickup truck and fleeing the scene, allowing him to go home that day.
Those hugs were shared again Tuesday, this time inside the Christina Street North courtroom as security staff prepared to take Bristol away in handcuffs to start serving his sentence of two years and six months behind bars.
After handing Bristol two concurrent sentences of two years each for dangerous driving causing bodily harm and assault with a weapon, McFadyen added an extra two months for failing to comply with a release order and another four months for failing to stop after the crash more than two years ago.
“Mr. Bristol could have remained to offer assistance. Instead, he chose to flee and leave Mr. Ball lying on the street fighting for his life,” the judge said Tuesday while delivering his decision.
The hit-and-run crash on Aug. 21, 2020, sent Clayton Ball, a 24-year-old Sarnia resident and father of a then-newborn child, to hospital with a long list of injuries.
Bristol had pleaded not guilty, but McFadyen convicted him in July of all charges following a trial scattered over various days earlier this year. Sentencing was adjourned multiple times, including one delay to get a pre-sentence report. Defense lawyer Nick Cake had asked for about two years in prison plus a five-year driving ban while assistant Crown attorney Sarah Carmody countered with between two and three years in prison.
During the mid-October sentencing hearing, Bristol told the judge he only pleaded not guilty because he wanted more details about the incident to come out at trial.
“I knew I was guilty of what happened. I knew that that night I caused those injuries to Mr. Ball and I’ll forever be sorry for the rest of my life,” he said at the time.
Bristol added he knows the Ball family won’t forget what happened but still asked them to forgive him.
A pair of statements written by Ball and his mother on how the incident affected them was previously read to the court. Ball said what happened and the fallout was terrifying.
“I don’t know why he did what he did that night and I don’t think I ever will know. But I do know that I will never be the same,” he wrote. “I will never be the same because of Noah Bristol.”
The pair had been friends for about five years leading up to the crash, but the judge previously noted their friendship was now in tatters. More than two years after the crash, Ball said he’s still sore and beat up physically while he also suffers nightmares and flashbacks.
Ball’s mother recalled falling to the floor crying as a nurse read the long list of injuries her son had suffered. She also remembered not initially being able to see him in hospital.
“She said nobody could see him at this point because he was unrecognizable and his injuries were so intense,” she wrote.
During his trial, the court heard Bristol hopped in the driver’s seat of Ball’s borrowed pickup truck around midnight that Friday and sped away amid safety concerns following an altercation about cocaine outside of a home on Netherlands Place. Ball ran after his vehicle – the white Dodge actually belonged to his grandmother – as it fled the cul-de-sac near Murphy Road and Exmouth Street and then climbed onto the exterior floorboard to try to get Bristol to stop.
His next memory was waking up in hospital.