TORONTO -- About 200 people attended a rally at Queen’s Park today calling for a change to dangerous driving laws after a mother and her three young daughters were killed in a tragic car crash in Brampton in June.
A group called Time For Change- Justice For Families hosted the rally this afternoon urging for a change to current laws on sentences and parole eligibility for serious driving convictions.
Thirty-seven year-old Karolina Ciasullo and her three daughters – Klara, 6, Lilanna, 3, and Mila, 1 – died after their Volkswagen SUV was struck by a blue Infiniti G35 near Torbram Road and Countryside Drive on June 18.
Police had previously said the vehicle was travelling through an intersection at a high rate of speed when the crash took place.
The driver, identified by police as Caledon resident Brady Robertson, was transported from the scene to hospital with serious injuries after the crash.
Less than a week later he was taken into custody and now faces four counts of dangerous driving causing death, police said.
Rally coordinator Jillian McLeod spoke to CP24 and said the idea for the rally came after creating an online petition to strengthen laws and set mandatory maximum and minimum sentences for serious driving convictions.
“Basically to start with, we want stunt driving and street racing, which is also an issue along with dangerous and impaired driving, we want those added to the criminal code as criminal offences, McLeod said. “Right now, unless they cause injury or death, they’re only ticketable offences.”
McLeod said she started the petition and the rally because she wants to honour the Ciasullo family and also because she has been personally affected by impaired driving incidents.
When she was 16, McLeod said, an impaired driver killed one of her friends.
"It was just devastating at the time. So, it's a really hard thing for a 16-year-old to go through," she said.
"It could have been any of us at that time because any of us could have been driving that car. We'd all just got our licenses, and we just had started driving so it could have been any of us."
Earlier this year, one of McLeod's friends died after a collision involving an impaired driver in Edmonton.
"I started it basically in honour of that family, but also because of my experiences with impaired drivers," she said.
Jessica Spieker attended the rally and said she was almost killed by a driver who only paid a $300 fine.
She said she wants to see changes to the law to ensure more justice for victims.
“That absence of justice which is applicable to every family that has been shattered by road violence, that absence, that black hole where something restorative should be, that is traumatic for survivors and for families who have been bereaved, and that needs to be fixed.”
As of Sunday afternoon, the petition had almost 83,000 signatures.
A two-day bail hearing for Robertson is scheduled to begin on Aug. 20 at 9:30 a.m.
