A Mount Pearl man has been convicted of impaired driving causing the death of a young woman from Torbay.

30-year-old Tyler Harding stared blankly at the floor as the tragic facts were read aloud in court this morning.

Harding was drunk when he crashed his Ford Ranger into a ditch on the Torbay Bypass Road, killing his passenger and girlfriend, Katie Hynes.

The 29-year-old victim was thrown from the truck and pronounced dead at the scene.

The crash occurred shortly after midnight on August 8, 2021, minutes after they left a nearby bar.

Witnesses said both were drunk, with Harding having a half dozen beer and several drinks, to the point where he couldn’t walk a straight line.

One woman tried in vain to stop Hynes from getting into the truck before it skidded away from the parking lot.

Distraught friends and relatives fought back tears and anger as the court heard how Harding repeatedly claimed and blamed the victim for grabbing the wheel and causing the crash.

Harding had been on court orders not to drink or be in a bar at all, telling police, “I shouldn’t have been driving but that’s not why it happened.”

Evidence, however, showed no sudden change in direction of the truck, but rather a gradual path to impact in the ditch.

At the frantic scene, Harding, himself covered in blood, told one witness: “That’s my baby Katie…please help her…I just want to get her home.”

A date has not yet been set for sentencing.