Nearly seven years after his three children, Daniel, 9, Harrison, 5, and Milly, 2, were killed by a drunk driver, Edward Lake was found dead at his home in Brampton, Ontario, the day after Father’s Day. He died by suicide.
“When you lose someone in a drunk driving accident, the pain never goes away. It stays with you forever. And I know full well that’s what happens,” said Carolyn Swinson, director of victim services for the Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) Section in Toronto.
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Swinson’s father was killed by a drunk driver and years later his beloved son Rob also lost his life to a drunk driver.
“We just have to learn different ways to deal with it. We learn different ways of coping. We learn that sometimes we have to go and find a quiet space because we need it, because we need to cry,” she said, adding, “even after many, many years, the pain never goes away. It never goes away. It is always with you. We just have to learn to live with it.”
Swinson said that despite education and public awareness campaigns against drunk driving, “the numbers have been going up.”
The accident that claimed the lives of the Neville-Lake children in September 2015 took place in Vaughan.
Global News contacted the York Regional Police (YRP) to find out if anything has changed on the roads since then.
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“So far in 2022, we have filed more than 950 charges related to driving while intoxicated. This is a 20 percent increase from the same period in 2021, and a 15 percent increase from statistics from the last five years. Our citizen-generated calls about drunk driving are up 21.38% from last year and 3.77% from the last five years,” detailed data shared by YRP.
In an email, a YRP spokesperson added: “We remind those who choose to drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol that it is not only the police who are watching them, but our citizens who also refuse to tolerate this behaviour.
“Anyone who chooses to put others at risk by driving while under the influence of alcohol should expect to be caught and charged.”
“About ten people every hour in Canada are charged with driving under the influence of alcohol or have their license suspended because they have been driving under the influence of alcohol. That’s almost 240 people per day. That’s ridiculous,” Swinson said.
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“People just make bad decisions when they’ve been drinking and driving or when they’re using drugs and driving, and we should have a zero tolerance policy,” said Toronto defense attorney Daniel Brown.
Brown noted that zero tolerance is the case for “younger novice drivers” and noted that he would like to see that applied to all drivers.
“There are so many options available for people to find alternative ways home, designated drivers and so asking someone at the time they are driving to judge their sobriety is really impossible and instead of having that situation we should take it off altogether,” she said.
In the wake of Edward Lake’s death, Canadians expressed their frustration with the penalties for driving under the influence in this country and called for harsher sentences on social media.
Brown explained that while no sentence for someone who takes another person’s life will feel good, there are many factors that contribute to the decision.
“When we look at someone’s criminal behavior, we have to compare it to what other judges have done in other cases in the past and what society requires of those judges. The judge cannot focus solely on retribution. The judge also has to be focused on rehabilitation and reintegration,” he said.
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“Marco Muzzo, no matter how long his sentence was, was going to have to rejoin society in the future and the judge had to be focused on that, on not imposing a sentence on him that would be absolutely crushing and would prevent him from reintegrating into society” , he added.
“One of the things, as a victim of drunk driving accidents, that makes people so angry is that every person who is killed or injured in a drunk driving accident knows that it is totally preventable. , that people have to take responsibility for themselves, that if you’re going to go out drinking, taking drugs, for God’s sake, don’t get behind the wheel of the car because the consequences can be so tragic,” Swinson said.
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