Man gets 18 months for fatal Ancaster crash
Family of brothers killed on Jerseyville Road feel ‘tortured’
A Hamilton roofer who a judge says shows no remorse for killing two area men and maiming a third with excessive speeding has been given 18 months in jail.
Rui Alberto Cordeiro-Calouro, 33, of Stoney Creek, was sentenced Monday in a case that stretched five-and-a-half years because he kept changing lawyers.
Cordeiro-Calouro, a Portuguese immigrant who came to Canada in 2010, could be deported after serving his sentence. Within hours of being sent to jail on Monday however, he was released on bail.
He is out, pending his appeal of his convictions on two counts of dangerous driving causing death and one of dangerous driving causing bodily harm resulting from a collision on Jerseyville Road in Ancaster dating back to Aug. 3, 2012.
The crash killed brothers Greg and Wayne Savoy in the car Cordeiro-Calouro collided with. The Savoys, both in their early 50s, grew up in Ancaster but lived in Brantford at the time. The crash also severely and permanently injured one of Cordeiro-Calouro’s passengers.
Court heard Cordeiro-Calouro was driving several friends in a rented car, doing 179 km/h in a 60 km/h zone on a poorly lit, curving, narrow and hilly road at night. When he encountered the oncoming car driven by Greg Savoy that was crossing the yellow
centre line, his excessive speed prevented him from avoiding it.
During sentencing, Superior Court Justice Dale Parayeski said there was “evidence of patently excessive speed for some sustained period before the collision” while he was showing off for his friends in a new highpowered car. Assistant Crown attorney James Vincelli had argued for a three-year sentence and a six-year driving prohibition. The defence requested a conditional release with no jail time. The judge sentenced him to 18 months for each dangerous driving causing death conviction and 15 months for injuring his passenger — all to be served currently within 18 months.
“I'm absolutely sickened,” said the dead victims’ sister Valerie Savoy. It took more than five years and “all that wasted taxpayer money” on court remands to get “a piddly 18 month sentence,” she said. In her victim statement to the court earlier, she said that losing her brothers has destroyed her family. “You can’t imagine the pain, anger, sadness, despair and depression that we all feel.”
She said Cordeiro-Calouro “tortured” her family by playing the court system to his advantage. “It should never have taken over five years for us to get to this point. We’ve felt victimized with every court appearance, remand and postponement.”
She said he dragged the case out so long that both of her parents died before the case was heard. “Both of my parents grieved themselves to death with neither getting any closure,” she said. “Our hearts are shattered and we will never heal from this.”
Greg Savoy’s partner Patti Didero-Savoy had her sister Anna Villeneuve speak for her outside court. “We’re very disappointed in the amount of time given, especially for causing two deaths,” said Villeneuve. “It’s shocking. I think the system let us down.”
Parayeski had noted that a sentence of six months or greater for Cordeiro-Calouro could result in deportation. But he added “While Portugal is not a deprived Third World country — and Mr. Cordeiro-Calouro has family there, and he has only been absent for some eight years now — his removal would negatively impact his family here in Canada.”
He doesn’t have a criminal record, but he does have a “very poor driving record” with convictions for serious offences including stunt driving and speeding before the 2012 crash, Parayeski noted. And even since, he has had additional driving convictions.
“He has little or no respect for the rules of the road and its other users,” said Parayeski