The Parole Board of Canada was split on whether to grant full parole to Cochrane cement truck driver Daniel Tschetter, who was convicted of killing five people in a 2007 collision in Calgary.
Appearing before the board in Calgary May 16, Tschetter was seeking full parole, despite being eligible for statutory release in approximately one month.
Due to the board’s split decision, Tschetter will remain in the halfway house he has been housed since Sept. 19, when he was granted day parole after serving three of his five-and-a-half year sentence.
An emergency hearing could also be in the cards because of the split, which may not occur before Tschetter’s mandated mid-June statutory release.
Tschetter, however, told reporters following the hearing he would not seek release prior to his statutory release in June.
Tschetter was originally sentenced May 2009.
Tschetter’s truck slammed into a vehicle stopped at a red light, killing all five occupants – Chris Gautreau, 41; his 33-year-old girlfriend, Melaina Hovdebo; his two daughters, Alexia, 9; and Kiarra, 6; and Hovdebo’s 16-month-old son, Zachary Morrison.
Tschetter has visited family in Cochrane several times since being granted unescorted temporary passes from prison in October 2011.
Tschetter has maintained he was not intoxicated at the time of the collision, despite the fact that police report they found him drinking from a vodka bottle when they arrived at the scene of the collision.
Tschetter has said the bottle was not for him, and that he had mistaken it for his water bottle.
