RED DEER, Alta. – A grieving central Alberta mother hoping to have something good come out of her son’s death wants harsher penalties for serious hit and runs.
Amy Sorensen has been circulating a petition seeking increased punishment for hit and runs resulting in major injury or death.
She is also calling for defined mandatory penalties for all hit-and-run collisions.
Sorensen’s son, Trystan, was 18 when he was killed in May 2014 while longboarding on a highway east of Penhold.
Jessica Lyn Masyk pleaded guilty to three charges last week and is to be sentenced in November.
Sorensen says she has collected 10,000 signatures so far.
“This whole thing has been a travesty of justice,” she said.
“It’s a game. You plead not guilty … and then you change your plea to guilty to get a lesser sentence. It’s almost as though the justice system is geared toward the accused, protecting them and getting them off and not holding them accountable.”
Sorensen has been gathering signatures door-to-door and at Red Deer’s public market on Saturdays.
“Hopefully it will do something good,” she said.
“He was a really loving kid, He used to hug me to death. He’d give me a big bear hug and practically squeeze the life out of you.”
Sorensen doesn’t feel Masyk, 26, is being held responsible for killing Trystan because none of the three charges – failing to stop at a collision, public mischief by filing a false police report and driving while disqualified – deals specifically with his death.
“We spend our lives as parents teaching our children that you have to take responsibility and culpability when you do something wrong … (but) when you get into the (justice) system, it reverses it.”
(Red Deer Advocate)
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