Scarborough couple loses baby, injured following crash involving suspected impaired driver

Christian Caliyo and his wife Janeth Albaracin had so much to look forward to. Albaracin was six months pregnant with the couple’s second child, and were excited about a gender reveal party planned for next month, hopeful for a boy.

“We already had a daughter. It was going to be a complete package for us,” Caliyo told Global News’ Catherine McDonald, sitting in a wheelchair in the trauma ward at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre on Tuesday.

But their dreams have been shattered, after the couple was seriously hurt in a head-on collision just minutes from their Scarborough home last Wednesday night, and Albaracin lost the baby, from injuries she suffered.

“Such a loss. It’s hard,” said Caliyo holding back tears.

The couple was travelling eastbound on Wickson Trail near Blackwater Crescent when police say they were struck head-on by a westbound Toyota Corolla.

“The car was coming close to our lane and then it struck us head on. It was really fast. It was like two seconds. There was nowhere to escape,” Caliyo recalled. Despite being in pain, he managed to get around to the passenger side of his car and, with the help of a Good Samaritan, extricate his wife.

“There was smoke coming out of my car and I was thinking ‘Oh my God, it’s going to explode,’ and I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, how’s the baby?'”

The couple travelled to Sunnybrook by ambulance and Caliyo said he continued to ask first responders if his wife and the unborn child were going to be OK.

It wasn’t until the next morning that Caliyo learned they’d lost the child. “I heard the doctor say she got liver damage.”

He then asked about the baby. “One of the doctors whispered to me, ‘Sorry, we try our best but the baby is gone.’ I cried.”

Caliyo said the couple only learned the baby was a boy after he died.

“It’s painful. My daughter came the next day and said, ‘Where’s mama and the baby?’ It’s hard for me to explain, I try to think what should I tell her. I just said, ‘Mama’s in (a) different room and she’s sick and then the baby went to heaven already.'”

The couple later learned that the driver involved in the collision, identified by police as 32-year-old Daren Rampersaud, had been charged with three counts of impaired driving causing bodily harm and one count of driving while prohibited.

His girlfriend, who was a passenger in his car, was also injured in the collision.

Rampersaud appeared in court Tuesday via Zoom from the Toronto South Detention Centre wearing an orange prison jumpsuit with a sling on his arm. After a two-hour bail hearing, a justice of the peace denied him bail. Rampersaud’s mother was weeping when she learned her son was not being released.

Back in the hospital, Caliyo said he keeps thinking about his four-year-old daughter who is home with his mother, as he and his wife recover.

“She’s by herself. I asked my wife, ‘What if you and me passed away?'”

Caliyo says neither he nor Albaracin were able to meet to their baby boy. One of the doctors asked him if he wanted to see the child but Caliyo said he could barely stand and his wife was still on oxygen.

Instead, they have two photographs that were given to them by hospital staff showing the child’s tiny feet and hands as a memory.

Caliyo said he is upset to learn that the other driver was allegedly impaired. “He caused a lot of damage to us,” he said, and wants him to know the pain he’s done to their family.

“It’s really devastating.”

The family has started a GoFundMe to help cover funeral costs while the couple are unable to work.

Rampersaud will be back in court on July 17.