Robert Urso, a vehicle inspection and enforcement officer with the Ministry of Transportation, completed his testimony on Friday during the fourth day of the Micheal Hickey trial.
Hickey is charged with three counts of criminal negligence causing death after his tractor-trailer flipped on Highway 69, near the Killarney turnoff, and caused the death of Kelly Ann Henderson and her twin 12-year-old sons Corbin and Jordin Sauve.
Urso examined the tractor-trailer involved in a deadly crash on Aug. 7, 2002, after the collision, and identified the vehicle's fifth axle as being misaligned.
The tenth witness of the trial, and final one of the week, was Sgt. Steve Russell of the Greater Sudbury Police Service.
Russell examined the scene of the collision and determined two sets of tire marks along the highway, before the scene of the crash, which he said are from the tractor-trailer. Another set of marks was identified, but was not definitely concluded as being from the commercial vehicle involved.
The sergeant said these "weight shift" tire marks, which are marks left when the weight of the trailer is shifted onto one side of a commercial vehicle, usually occur from the back axle of a trailer. In this case, the marks were from the centre axle, he said, which he determined from the patterns in the markings and gouges in the pavement at and near the crash scene.
"In all my experiences, the marks found at the scene were very unique," he said.
At one point, the driver of the tractor-trailer regained control of the vehicle, said Russell. This is known by the breaks in tire marks on the pavement.
Once the rollover occurred and the tractor-trailer was in its final resting place, it basically occupied all three lanes of the roadway, he continued.
From his observations at the scene, Russell determined the Henderson vehicle's impact location with the tractor-trailer was the driver's side door of the car.
Throughout the 600 metre scene, the sergeant completed about 305 different measurements during the course of his investigation.
The trial continues on Monday with a testimony from Steve Stresman, a forensic mechanic with the OPP, who examined the trailer unit of Hickey's vehicle after the collision.
