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| Photo courtesy Allen Gemmrig |
On Wednesday, Watson released his preliminary report, giving the testimony of both occupants. "Both men put on their seatbelts and the pickup was started," he wrote. "What happened next has two viewpoints but only one outcome."
At 10:51 a.m. January 15, a caller at Larson's Department Store reported that a vehicle just ran into the back of a building and hit a tree. Two minutes late, Chief Watson was on scene, determined that a pickup had crashed into the back of the Callie's Niche building at 6429 Bonner Street, that no one was injured seriously or requesting an ambulance.
Moments later he determined that what had started out just minutes before as a test drive of a 2007 Ford F-150 at Riverside Auto Center across the street had not gone according to plan, neither for Tad McCalmant, 86 Bonners Ferry, nor for Riverside salesman Ken Yount, who was showing the vehicle when the crash occurred.
Yount told Watson that the vehicle had been parked on the Riverside lot facing onto First Street when McCalmant got in the driver's side and Yount the passenger. Yount said McCalmant started the vehicle and was pulling onto the street when the vehicle suddenly accelerated to full throttle, throwing him back in his seat, and within just seconds the vehicle launched across the street onto the Callie's Niche property, where it hit a pickup parked behind the store, pushed the pickup out of the way, crashed into an upper deck and then into the back of the Callie's Niche building, taking out two walls and continuing out through snow in the backyard, the wall of Callie's Niche rolling up over the Ford like a garage door opening, until the pickup struck a tree head on.
Yount said it was only then that he noticed that McCalmant had the accelerator pressed to the floor. He noticed McCalmant was dazed and didn't seem to know what had happened when he was able to lean over and turn off the ignition.
McCalmant concurred that he didn't remember much about the crash. But he did remember that once the pickup started moving forward, he thought it had a bit too much throttle, so he took his foot off the gas, he told Watson, and pressed down on the brake as hard as he could.
"Because of the amount of momentum and velocity it took to cause the amount of damage sustained," Watson wrote, "it was clear to me that Mr. McCalmant pressed down on the as pedal instead of the brake."