COUNTY - The mother of a 17-year-old boy struck and killed by a vehicle in Springfield in late May says someone should be held accountable for her son's death.

 Jacob Noonan was walking with friends around 3:45 p.m. on May 27 when he was hit. He died at the scene.

 Following a three-month investigation, the RCMP have told the Noonan family they plan to charge the driver with passing on a solid double line before the accident. No charges will be laid in connection with the actual collision.

 Shelly Noonan says that's simply not right.

 "It's a parent's worst nightmare," she said last week.

 Jacob was a popular Grade 12 student about to graduate from New Germany Rural High School. He left behind his parents, Danny and Shelly, a brother Jeremy, and sisters Danielle and Megan.

 "I am so mad, you just don't know," Mrs. Noonan said. "It's awful. It's just terrible."

 On the afternoon he was killed, Jacob drove his cousin home from school. They were walking with two other boys to a nearby river to check out a fishing hole when Jacob lost a shoe crossing Highway 10. He was bending down to retrieve it near the edge of the road when he was struck.

 The collision happened at the bottom of a small hill which includes a blind corner. The road is marked with a solid double line. The car which struck Jacob was on the wrong side of the road, passing vehicles as it came out of the turn and down the hill.

 Mrs. Noonan was at home in North River playing outside with her young granddaughter when she heard the sirens. She sent her daughter, Megan, inside to call her brother on his cellphone.

 "I've always done that with all my kids. If I heard a siren, that's my first reaction," she said. "If I knew they were out on the road, I automatically called."

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 Megan didn't get an answer. Seconds later, Mrs. Noonan got a call telling her Jacob had been in an accident.

 "I don't even remember driving there. I drove myself," she said.

 A firefighter confirmed the tragic news. Mrs. Noonan saw her son lying in a ditch with a paramedic beside him, but emergency workers wouldn't let her get close. Efforts to save Jacob weren't successful.

 According to Mrs. Noonan, the police determined the car was travelling 102 km/hr when the driver braked. That was after he struck Jacob. The posted speed limit on that section of Highway 10 is 90.

 The car carried Jacob on its hood for more than 300 feet before it stopped.

 The crash was investigated through the Middleton RCMP office. Calls there were forwarded to a provincial RCMP spokesperson last week, but Cpl. Mary Jo DeLuco could not confirm that the driver has been charged. She said the collision is still under investigation and refused to discuss details of the case.

 However, Cpl. DeLuco said if Mrs. Noonan is unhappy with that investigation she should be talking to the RCMP rather than the media.

 "If she has those concerns, she should be directly speaking to us," the corporal said. "We'll have a full, fair and frank discussion with her about the investigation."

 Mrs. Noonan is determined to find justice for Jacob. She plans to seek legal advice this week to find out what options she has, but says she promised her son as she stood over his casket that she wouldn't give up.

 If someone should be held accountable, she wants to see that happen. If the problem lies within the system with current laws, she wants to see changes so no one else will have to experience such disappointment again.

 Mostly, she says, she misses the little things - Jacob eating donuts for breakfast, him coming home just in time for curfew and tossing his truck keys on the counter, the way he mowed the lawn so she wouldn't have to, pinching his face and telling him she loves him.

 The whole family misses the 17 year old, who was supposed to graduate with his sister, Megan, in June. Instead, older brother Jeremy accepted Jacob's diploma. Their other sister, Danielle, still writes Jacob a letter every day.

 "He was my son," Mrs. Noonan says. "I won't let him die for nothing."

posted on 09/15/090