Cochrane cement truck driver Daniel Tschetter was granted statutory release June 14 after serving two-thirds of a five-and-a-half-year sentence for manslaughter.
Tschetter was sentenced in May 2009 after his truck slammed into a vehicle stopped at a red light two years prior in Calgary. The collision killed all five occupants – Chris Gautreau, 41, his 33-year-old girlfriend, Melaina Hovdebo, his two daughters, Alexia, nine, and Kiarra, six, and Hovdebo’s 16-month-old son, Zachary Morrison.
On May 16, Tschetter was denied early parole after a split decision by the Parole Board of Canada, with one judge voting to grant parole and the other rejecting.
Appearing before the board in Calgary, Tschetter was seeking full parole, despite being eligible for statutory release approximately one month later.
Following the split decision, Tschetter said he would no longer seek early release prior to his June 14 statutory release, as mandated by law.
“I’m not going to go to another hearing, I’m going to go now until my stat,” Tschetter said to reporters following the May 16 decision. “Every time you go to a hearing, you have to realize you’re opening up old wounds, and the hearings don’t get any easier, they get tougher.”
Herb Grinder, the uncle of victim Zachary Morrison, said the release came too early. “What kind of deterrent is that?” he questioned at a press conference in May. “I find that hard to believe.”
Morrison’s aunt, Tracey Grieder, said she does not believe Tschetter is sorry for what he did.
“I don’t really think he is sorry,” she said. “I think he says it for the court.”
Tschetter said that being sorry for what he did was ‘an understatement.’
“If anyone doubts me, I’ll challenge them to walk in my boots for two minutes,” said Tschetter. “You can’t. There’s no words left…the pain, the anguish, the anxiety. The pain is beyond description…it’s that simple.”
Since the incident in December 2007, Tschetter has maintained that he was not intoxicated at the time of the collision, despite police finding him drinking from a vodka bottle when they arrived at the scene.
Tschetter has said the bottle was not for him, and that he had mistaken it for his water bottle.
Conditions of Tschetter’s parole forbid him to operate a motor vehicle. He was convicted of impaired driving in 1978.
Tschetter was granted day-parole Sept. 19, 2012, and from that point on served the remainder of his sentence in a halfway house.
Tschetter had visited Cochrane to see family several times since being granted unescorted, temporary passes from prison in October 2011.
An online petition was started by Crystal Gautreau, the niece of Christopher Gautreau, one of the victims, in July 2012 in an effort to stop Tschetter’s parole.
