Police Ticket Elderly Man For Driving With Cell Phone -- Despite The Fact He Doesn't Own A Cell Phone

No one supports Manitoba’s law banning cell phone use by drivers more than Cheryl Derry. Her husband Mark was killed last fall in a crash with another driver suspected of texting behind the wheel.

But she’s upset at news officers ticketed an elderly man who doesn’t even own a cell phone and insists he wasn’t using one when police stopped him last Friday.

“To me it’s like the law is a joke, that nobody including the police, are taking it seriously. And to me, to my family, it’s really serious,” Cheryl Derry told Global News on Tuesday. “I mean, what it, a money grab?” she asks.

Winnipeg police refused again Tuesday to discuss the case of Laszlo Piszker who says officers stopped him on Portage Avenue Friday and refused to take him up on his offer to search his car for the cell phone they claimed they saw him talking on while driving.

“I said that’s impossible, I haven’t got a phone,” Piszker said in an interview Monday.

He was with his wife, Margaret who says officers yelled at her and threatened to arrest her when she tried to argue.

“It upset me, it really upset,” she said tearfully in an interview Monday. The couple is in their 70s.