A London man who led police on a wild, drug-fuelled chase through parts of Southwestern Ontario, forcing one cruiser off the road and smashing into another, has been given a lifetime driving ban and ordered to repay an insurance company more than $27,000.
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Trevor Goessell, 39, was also given a time-served sentence of nearly 30 months after being convicted on four counts of drug-impaired driving.
“Even if you’re off drugs, if you get behind the wheel of a car and get caught, you’ll go back to jail,” Justice Robert Gee said. “You’re going to have to deal with it.”
In December 2022, Goessell was accused of stealing several vehicles in London, leaving behind other stolen vehicles, and driving a stolen F-150 pickup truck east from the city toward Brant County, said assistant Crown attorney Jeff Mazin.
But the owner of the truck had a tracking app and helped direct police to the vehicle.
Ontario Provincial Police were guided to several addresses where the vehicle was ‘pinging’ and almost caught Goessell in a gravel lot but he sped away on King Edward Street in Brant County. Officers declined to follow him out of concern for public safety.
Then the vehicle pinged on Rest Acres Road, which runs south of Hwy. 403 between Woodstock and Brantford. Police set up a containment area around a dead end.
“An officer was travelling down the road to search for the vehicle and saw the vehicle travelling toward him at a high rate of speed,” Mazin said. “(He) had to make a quick evasive manoeuvre off the highway to avoid a collision. Then other officers stopped (the stolen) vehicle on the highway but the subject struck the cruiser. He tried to evade the officers but was pinned in.”
Goessell appeared to be impaired when he was arrested and a drug test came back positive for fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine and other drugs.
The officer who had to ditch his cruiser was unharmed but the officer whose vehicle was struck – Const. Dylan MacKinnon – was taken to hospital and was off work for several days.
MacKinnon later became a local hero after raising thousands for the Canadian Cancer Society in a six-kilometre run in Paris after being diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. He died last August.
Goessell, who has a lengthy criminal record, had been under two separate release orders along with driving prohibitions and suspensions at the time of the incident.
Mazin said the Crown wouldn’t have agreed to the time-served sentence but for terrible conditions and an incident at Maplehurst Correctional Centre.
Goessell was also swept up in what’s being called a Maplehurst ICIT (Institutional Crisis Intervention Team) incident in December 2023 that other courts have already ruled breached the rights of the inmates involved.
In other court cases, inmates reported having their hands zip-tied, being strip-searched, left in their underwear while cold air was pumped in and possibly being beaten or pepper-sprayed. Mazin indicated Goessell could have made an application about his Charter rights being infringed but saved a substantial amount of court time by not doing so.
Goessell told the judge he’s tried to stay sober and wants to work to gain custody of his kids.
“There are a lot of good examples of people who have overcome addiction,” Gee told him. “It’s not hopeless and it’s not easy but the only person who can control your future is you.”
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