Drunk driver jailed six years in fatal crash
‘How do you rehabilitate a situation like this? You don’t’
The day after Andrew Downey got into a car with a drunk driver on his way home from a Halloween celebration at a Gatineau bar in 2009, his security licence arrived in the mail at the home he shared with his family.
The 21-year-old, who had recently graduated from college with a major in community and justice services, was not alive to receive it.
“Andrew was ready to make his mark on the world,” his mother wrote in a victim impact statement that was read out loud by her teary husband in an Ottawa courtroom Friday afternoon. “It is heartbreaking to ponder what we will never experience as a result of our loss. To seeing Andrew mature into a man, fulfil his social and intellectual promise, get married, be a father.”
Brandon Gaul, 27, was sentenced to six years in prison after pleading guilty to drunk driving causing death and two counts of drunk driving causing bodily harm. He was arrested in Alberta in April after failing to appear in court in Ottawa nearly two years before.
“This is an instance when our justice system is incapable of rendering justice,” Judge Robert Fournier said.
“How do you rehabilitate a situation like this? You don’t. You live with it.”
Gaul was almost two-and-ahalf times over the legal limit for alcohol when he got behind the wheel and crossed the Champlain Bridge with three passengers, including Downey, in his Volkswagen Jetta. The speeding car bumped the curb a couple of times before it veered off Island Park Drive, bashed into a tree and flipped over onto its roof just after 3 a.m. on Nov. 1, 2009, according to an agreed statement of facts. The impact caused the tree to snap and become uprooted.
A witness estimated the car was travelling at 120 km/h in the 60 km/h zone.
Gaul and his two roommates who were in the car were also taken to hospital with serious injuries but survived.
Gaul is “very regretful” that he chose to drive drunk, said his lawyer, Bob Carew.
“Those were his friends,” he said.
Almost four years after the crash, Downey’s “close-knit family” is still heartbroken, said his mother, Wendy Gibson.
Their “mother and son bond” grew when his father died when he was nine, she said.
“He would provide hugs and even a back rub to take away the daily stresses,” Gibson wrote.
He was very close to his younger brother and stepfather, too, she said.
“It does not get easier. In fact, it is more difficult,” Gibson wrote. “We think of him every day — many, many times a day. We break down and then pick up the pieces.”