CALEB NICKERSON
FORT COULONGE April 30, 2019
A video shot Tuesday night and shared on social media quickly went viral and landed two young men in a pile of trouble.
The video, taken with the app Snapchat, shows the pair laughing and travelling quickly along the waterlogged chemin de la Passe in Mansfield, which was closed to outside traffic at the time. Water splashes up on the hood of the vehicle and sizable waves are created in its wake.
The video was shared to Facebook by Max Beaulieu and quickly racked up tens of thousands of views and hundreds of comments.
The police were notified of the incident and the driver of the vehicle was given two statements of offence totalling $2,027 for endangering property and using a cell phone while driving in addition to nine demerit points on his licence. The passenger, who turned himself in to police, was let go with an agreement to volunteer time and equipment to the municipality as compensation for his actions. No criminal charges were filed.
The police did not release the names of the two men and THE EQUITY could not confirm their identity, but in the comments of the video, Beaulieu posted a screenshot of a conversation with the man who allegedly posted the video, Thomas Stanton. The name Thomas appears in the top corner of the original Snapchat video.
In the conversation, which was conducted in French, Stanton identified the driver of the vehicle as Shayne Etheridge.
Mansfield Mayor Gilles Dionne was upset after he watched the video.
“I’m devastated to see that people would do this to other people,” he said.
