Family members of two students killed when a driver veered off the road at UBC’s Point Grey campus two years ago delivered emotional victim impact statements in a Richmond courtroom Monday.
The man behind the wheel in the fatal collision, 22-year-old Tim Goerner, pleaded guilty to two charges of dangerous driving causing death in October.
Emily Selwood and Evan Smith, both 18 years old, died when Goerner’s vehicle hit a lamp and boulder, then flipped onto the sidewalk where they were walking just before 2 a.m. on Sept. 26, 2021.
The court heard he was driving between 100 and 120 km/h in an 40 km/h zone and had alcohol in his system at the time.
At Goerner’s sentencing hearing on Monday, Selwood’s mother Laurie Selwood described how the first Christmas after her daughter died, the family sat at the dinner table and cried, without touching their holiday meal.
The following year, they didn’t bother making dinner, she told the court.
“Losing our daughter didn’t’ just change me it demolished me,” Selwood told the court.
“Just three weeks after we set up her dorm room we had to pack up her room … all the hopes and dreams she had, forgotten.”
Smith’s mother, Debbie O’Day-Smith, delivered a statement of her own telling Goerner he had “robbed me of my baby, my little boy.”
“He was taken because of your thoughtless and selfish act,” she said.
“You’re still young and I don’t think you understand the gravity of your actions … how will you honour the lives of those you have taken? You owe them that.”
Goerner cried visibly as he listened to the impact statements.
Lawyers for both the Crown and defence have made a joint submission to the court seeking a sentence of three years in prison followed by a five-year driving prohibition.
The judge is expected to return a decision on Tuesday.