Families demand justice for victims of drunk driving deaths

Charlene Reaveley’s mother says no one should be in her shoes.

Reaveley and another woman, Lorraine Cruz, were killed in Coquitlam in 2011. Today Cory Sater was found guilty of impaired driving causing death and dangerous driving causing death in the deaths of the two women.

Sater plead guilty to the charge of failing to stop at the scene of an accident.

Reaveley’s mother, Mary Ogilvie, says she wanted to do a happy dance when she heard the verdict today. But it’s a bittersweet day.

“No one’s got to be in my shoes, it’s got to stop,” she says on Unfiltered.

Sater will be sentenced on March 31. Ogilvie says they are hoping for a sentence of 25 years or more.

But Markita Kaulius, from Families for Justice, says those longer sentences are not the reality at all.

Markita’s daughter, Kassandra, was only 22 when she was killed by a drunk driver in 2011. That driver, Natasha Warren, fled the scene but was caught a short time later. Warren was sentenced to just over three years in prison.

“I wish that it was treated as a homicide, because it is a vehicular homicide,” says Markita on Unfiltered.

“But sadly our justice system gives not very much time for impaired drivers who cause death.”

Charlene had four children, ranging in age from ages 13 to 4. The two youngest do not remember their mother. “I’m there to remind them what their mom was like,” says Ogilvie.

Kaulius says in their lives they live with the aftermath every single day. “These people will serve very little time and I don’t know what the answer is,” she says.

Families for Justice has started a petition asking the federal government for stiffer sentences for these kinds of crimes.

“It would be nice to feel that at least the person that caused and committed the crime was being held accountable for some amount of time,” says Kaulius.

Ogilvie says she will never be able to move on from what happened.

“It’s like living in hell,” she says. “I live in hell.”

Kaulius says every day they wake up to the nightmare all over again.

“Because every day is another day without your child.”