State of Minnesota, Respondent,

This opinion will be unpublished and
may not be cited except as provided by
Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2016).

STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A17-0234

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Bruce Edward Canady,
Appellant.

Filed December 4, 2017
Affirmed
Connolly, Judge

Sherburne County District Court
File No. 71-CR-16-845

Lori Swanson, Attorney General, St. Paul, Minnesota; and

Kathleen A. Heaney, Sherburne County Attorney, George R. Kennedy, Assistant County
Attorney, Elk River, Minnesota (for respondent)

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Julie Loftus Nelson, Assistant
Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Connolly, Presiding Judge; Jesson, Judge; and Florey,
Judge.
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U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
CONNOLLY, Judge
Appellant challenges his conviction for failing to stop following a collision with an
unattended vehicle, arguing that the evidence was not sufficient to allow the jury to reach
its verdict because appellant’s testimony contradicted the officer’s testimony. Because the
weight and credibility of witnesses is for a jury to determine, we affirm.
FACTS
In June 2016, a peace officer who knew appellant Bruce Canady’s driver’s license
had been revoked saw appellant’s vehicle being driven on a road. The officer positioned
his squad car to pursue the vehicle, which drove away at a high speed. The officer then
activated his squad-car lights to signal that the vehicle should stop. The vehicle entered a
trailer park with a posted speed limit of 10 mph at about 50 mph, and the officer activated
his siren. The officer continued to pursue the vehicle as it turned out of the trailer park,
ran into an unoccupied car parked in the adjacent street, drove past several vacant parking
spaces, turned into anot her street, and passed several more vacant parking spaces before
stopping. Appellant was identified as the driver of his vehicle.
He was charged with fleeing a peace officer in a motor vehicle, driving after
revocation, and failing to stop following colli sion with an unattended vehicle. Appellant
pleaded guilty to driving after revocation, and, following a jury trial, was found guilty of
fleeing a peace officer in a motor vehicle and failing to stop following collision with an
unattended vehicle. He was sentenced to 21 months in prison.
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Appellant challenges his conviction of f ailing to stop following collision with an
unattended vehicle on the ground that the jury lacked sufficient evidence to find him guilty.
D E C I S I O N
[O]n review of a criminal conviction, [this court] will construe
the record most favorably to the state and will assume the
evidence supporting the conviction was believed and the
contrary evidence disbelieved. This is especially true where
resolution of the case depends on conflic ting testimony,
because weighing the credibility of witnesses is the exclusive
function of the jury.

State v. Pieschke, 295 N.W.2d 580, 584 (Minn. 1980). “The weight and credibility of the
testimony of individual witnesses is for the jury to determine.” State v. Moore, 438 N.W.2d
101, 108 (Minn. 1989).
The statutory definition of appellant’s offense provides that:
The driver of any motor vehicle involved in a collision shall
immediately stop the vehicle at the scene of the collision, or as
close to the scene as possible, and reasonably investigate what
was struck. If the driver knows or has reason to know the
collision resulted in damage to any unattended vehicle, the
driver must either locate and notify the driver or owner of the
vehicle of the name and address of the driver and registered
owner of the vehicle striking the unattended vehicle, report this
same information to a peace officer, or leave in a conspicuous
place in or secured to the vehicle struck, a written notice giving
the name and address of the driver and of the registered owner
of the vehicle doing the striking. The stop must be made
without unnecessarily obstructing traffic.

Minn. Stat. § 169.09, subd. 4 (2016). Appellant argues that his conduct did not meet this
definition because he “immediately stop [ped] at the scene of the collision, or as close to
the scene as possible” and “testified that he stopped his vehicle as soon as was practical
after the collision.”
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But the testimony of the officer who was pursuing appellant when the collision
occurred conflicted with appellant’s testimony. The officer was questioned:
Q: . . . [W]hat happen[ed] next?
A: [Appellant’s] vehicle turns southbound through the trailer court. It’s
a fairly long drive. And the trailers are close to that drive. So we proceeded
southbound through the trailer court and came out to 7th Street southeast.
Q: . . . How fast were you going on that road?
A. Again, I . . . would estimate in excess of 50 miles an hour through
there as well.
Q: Fifty miles an hour in a ten mile an hour zone?
A: Correct.
Q: At the end of that long roadway . . . is it marked with a traffic control
device?
A: Yes.
Q: What is that traffic control device?
A: There is a stop sign.
Q: And as [appellant’s] vehicle approached the stop sign did [it] stop at
the stop sign?
A: No.
Q: What happened next?
A: [Appellant’s] vehicle turned out onto 7 th Street southeast eastbound,
back towards the area we had [come from]. . . . And as it continued eastbound
I saw there was an unoccupied parked car on the south side of 7 th Street.
Based on that maneuver and the speed that the vehicle exited the trailer park
I suspected that some collision had taken place. But based on the rate that
we were traveling at I didn’t immediately observe any damage.
Q: And so it comes to a T, or the end of the road. Is that correct?
A: Yes.
Q: And so the parked car is at the end of that trailer court road or across
the street from that. Is that fair?
A: It was across the street, yes.
Q: And the vehicle is hit. Did [appellant’s] car stop immediately?
A: No.
Q: What happened next?
A: He quickly accelerated eastbound and then made a quic k turn
southbound onto 13th Avenue southeast
Q: And then what happened?
A: We were exceeding the speed limit again as I tried to catch up to him.
And then I saw the brake lights start to come on and the brake lights were
tapping. And then all of a sudden the vehicle just pulled over to the right
side of the road and came to a stop.
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. . . .
Q: . . . [W]ere there other opportunities for [appellant], were there open
areas that [appellant] could have stopped?
A: Absolutely.
Q: Were there any other vehicles, or was traffic so heavy that he couldn’t
have stopped at any other place?
A: No.
. . . .
Q: And then did [appellant] stop right after he hit that car?
A: No.
Q: What did he do?
A: Accelerated away from me.
Q: And then did he pull over immediately after that?
A: No.
Q: And what did he do?
A: Made another quick turn south on 13 th Avenue accelerating away
from me again.
Q: Before he eventually pulled over?
A: Correct.

The videotape from the squad car corroborates the officer’s testimony . It shows
that, after the crash, appellant accelerated away from the scene past several vacant parking
spaces, turned onto another street, and drove past more vacant parking spaces before he
finally stopped his car. The video and the officer’s testimony show that appellant did not
“stop [his] vehicle at the collision, or as close to the scene as possible.”
Appellant also argues that he did not need to comply with the statute’s requirement
to notify the owner of the unattended vehicle he struck because an o fficer witnessed the
collision. But appellant offers no legal support for the view that a driver who is being
pursued by a peace officer when he strikes an unattended vehicle is relieved of the statutory
obligation to notify eith er the owner of the vehicl e or the peace officer. Moreover, even
though peace officers were present, the video from the squad car indicates that appellant
did not mention the collision when being interrogated by them. The transcript indicates
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that a peace officer first learned of the collision when the vehicle’s owner reported that his
vehicle had been hit and damaged. An officer who came to the scene to assist was
questioned.
Q: . . . [W]ere you notified that as part of the pursuit that there was
a vehicle that had been hit?
A: No, not at the time. There was no radio traffic about that until
after the fact.
Q: . . . [B]ased on the information that you eventually received
about a vehicle being hit, did you then go and inspect that vehicle?
A: Yes, I did, once I was approached by the victim of that vehicle
that was hit. He advised that his vehicle was struck by the vehicle that
we were pursuing. I went to go investigate that part of the
investigation of the hit and run.

While appellant, having been detained and arrested, may not have been able to locate the
driver or owner of the vehicle or to leave a note on the vehicle, he could certainly have
complied with the statute by informing one of the peace officers at the scene that he had
collided with an unoccupied parked car.
Assuming that the jury believed the officer’s testimony and disbelieved appellant’s,
there was sufficient evidence to support the jury’s verdict that appellant did not stop his
vehicle at the scene of the collision o r as close to the collision as possible and that he did
not locate the driver, leave a note, or tell a peace officer that he had collided with a vehicle.
Affirmed.