[ISL] "Police act to keep lid on P.E.I. feud after death threats shouted during sentencing"

[rfmcdonald]

More from the National Post. I sincerely hope I will not see, in some months or years, news of a McGuigan killing one or two more more Vuozzos in reprisal for last year's crime.

The ill will between the two families dates back to Nov. 19, 1970 when Brent McGuigan’s father struck the Vuozzo family’s van. Cathy Vuozzo, 9, was killed. Her younger brother, Alfred Guy, and father survived the collision.

“I just seen lights coming and a vehicle coming,” Vuozzo’s father, Alfred Sr., told a coroner’s inquest in 1971, according to a transcript obtained by the National Post.

Motorists who came upon the scene found the lifeless body of nine-year-old Cathy lying in a ditch. The driver of the half-ton truck, Herbert McGuigan, was unconscious on the floor of his cab with a few beer caps around him.

“There was a strong odour of alcohol and his eyes were watery and he gave me the impression that he knew little of what happened,” a police constable testified at the inquest.

Herbert McGuigan was convicted of causing Cathy’s death “by driving a motor vehicle while his ability to drive a motor vehicle was impaired by alcohol.” He was sentenced to nine months in jail and banned from driving for a year. He has since died.

[. . .]

There are few other records showing any animosity between the two families — save for an incident at a local Legion in the 1990s, when Cathy’s mother allegedly hit one of McGuigan’s sons.

“She hit me and that was it,” Ivan McGuigan told the Post Tuesday. “It’s over with now.”