Mother still waiting for answers 9 months after Osoyoos Lake boat crash that killed her son

It is closing in on a year since a horrific boating collision on Osoyoos Lake took the life of Jill Maddigan’s son and she is still waiting for closure.

Maddigan and her family have been waiting for the results of the investigation into the June 8, 2019, boat collision that killed Nick Trask, 36, and his best friend Ryan Ellison, 35.

Maddigan says Nicholas, as she alone referred to her son, and Ellison drove from their homes in Maple Ridge to Osoyoos. They went out on the lake late in the afternoon to do some fishing before dinner, but never returned to their campsite after a collision occurred with a larger vessel containing three men.

Both boats sank following the impact. Nick and Ryan’s bodies were later recovered. The three men in the other boat sustained non-life threatening injuries.

Const. Lakhjinder Sidhu of the Osoyoos RCMP said in an email today, March 2, he could confirm the investigation into the circumstances surrounding the incident remains ongoing at this time.

“I can’t bring my boy back, so now I just want to know why he’s not here, what happened,” she says.

Maddigan was in Newfoundland when the collision occurred.

“We returned from Newfoundland in what was just a terrible trip,” she says, her voice breaking.

“We received toxicology reports on Nicholas and Ryan four months after the collision, but those weren’t the reports I was looking for. I knew my son didn’t have alcohol in him because he didn’t drink,” she says. “I’m waiting on the toxicology report from the people in the other boat. I’ve been told their blood alcohol levels may not even have been taken, but apparently there were beer cans in the water after the crash."

Maddigan says Nick was a passenger in the boat that day but was skilled on the water, having been a director of the Fraser Valley Drag Boat Association and therefore well-schooled in boating safety.

“He had plans and he’s not here to do anything now. We’re absolutely broken because we don’t know what happened or why,” Maddigan says.

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