Canada’s worst ‘road-rager’ could be an Edmonton man

He's only 25 but Timothy Justin Mack has already racked up a fearful record of terrorizing his fellow motorists in Edmonton.

Mack was arrested July 31, and charged with several offences after allegedly chasing another car and allegedly trying to run it off the road with his large SUV, CBC News reported.

According to police, the early-morning incident began when a motorist tried to pass Mack, who was driving erratically at half the posted speed limit and hitting the curb.

Mack allegedly started throwing garbage at the other vehicle and challenged the driver to a fight. When the other motorist tried to escape, it's alleged Mack kept pace and swerved at him in an apparent attempt to force him off the road. The other driver managed to get a photo of the SUV's licence plate before it fled.

CBC News said it had obtained documents showing Mack had two previous road-rage convictions and was on probation for one of them when the latest alleged incidence took place in April.

According to a police affidavit connected with this case, Mack has been involved in eight other reported road-rage incidents dating back to 2005, the Edmonton Journal said.

He was previously convicted of assaulting a man who was going out with his ex-girlfriend. He stopped behind the man's car at an intersection, walked up to the window and punched him several times. When the other man fled, Mack chased him, forced his car to stop and punched him some more.

Later the same day, Mack and two companions dragged him from his vehicle and beat him so severely he suffered a broken and injuries to his back, face and ribs, CBC News reported.

Mack wasn't even driving when, in 2011, he jumped out of his girlfriend's car when it was stopped behind another vehicle in a construction zone. He dragged that driver from his car and, in front of his wife and three children, punched him twice in the face, breaking his nose.

That earned Mack a conviction for assault earlier this year, for which he received a 24-month suspended sentence.

The police affidavit listed several other incidents for which he was never charged.

Mack, who's being held without bail pending next court appearance a week from now, hasn't killed anyone, so far. But he clearly needs to be taken off the road.

Edmonton police think they found a way. They seized his GMC Yukon Denali under Alberta's civil forfeiture law. Once he's dealt with his criminal charges, Mack will have to go to court to try and get the 5,500-pound truck back.

The Journal reported this is the first time authorities have used the law in a case of alleged road rage.

Mack's history showed he posed a "clear threat to public safety," police said in justifying the seizure.

[ Related: Road rage accused has history of violent assault ]

Some are questioning the use of the forfeiture law, on the books in Alberta and other provinces to confiscate property that a judge rules was acquired using the proceeds of crime or was used during the commission of an offence.

Even if someone is acquitted of the related criminal charge, they still have to go to court to get their property back. And the burden of proof for the government to justify keeping it is lower in civil court — it doesn't require proof beyond a reasonable doubt, merely on a balance of probabilities.

Edmonton Sun columnist Lorne Gunter called the law an abuse of process.

"Civil forfeiture is used mostly to take drug dealers’ fancy cars away from them," he wrote in the Sun this week. "If we let police start using these laws to seize property in other crimes, we are on a dangerous downward slope."

Karl Wilberg, Alberta's director of civil forfeiture, said the level of risk has to be high to invoke the law in this kind of case.

“It has to be serious, where someone could have got hurt,” he told CBC News.

Yet Gunter sympathized with the police, noting Mack's suspended sentence for the 2011 assault was "less than a slap on the wrist."

If he's convicted this time, Gunter wrote, Mack should get a significant jail sentence and a driving ban long enough that "he is far too old ever to threaten anyone again—like maybe until he is 65 or even 75."

Whether that's enough is open to question. The fact is people who think they have a god-given right to drive drunk or angry find a way around driving prohibitions and even vehicle seizures.

[ Related: B.C. road rage death gets driver 5½ years in prison ]

Mack may be an extreme example but Canadians clearly feel more threatened on the road. The Canadian Press reported in 2011 that a Canadian Automobile Association-sponsored poll found three quarters of us think things are deteriorating.

"People generally feel there's a lack of courtesy, there's a lot of anger out there and people are concerned about running into aggressive drivers," John Vavrik, a psychologist with the Insurance Corp. of B.C., told CP.

According to an Ontario study, almost half of motorists surveyed back in 2003 reported being cursed at or given the finger, while about seven per cent were threatened with damage to their vehicle or bodily harm. It's unlikely things have gotten calmer in the last decade.

The advent of smartphone video has generated plenty of examples of bad behaviour uploaded to the web, like this incident in North Vancouver.

But the tools that police and the courts have to deal with the worst cases are limited to what the law and basic civil liberties allow.