A food delivery driver was sentenced to four years in prison after speeding at nearly twice the posted limit in downtown Toronto while on duty, causing a collision and launching his vehicle onto a busy sidewalk, where he injured five pedestrians and killed a teenage boy.
Madam Justice Gillian Roberts of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice said Wednesday it was an aggravating factor that Demar Kerr was driving for pay at the time of the 2021 collision. She noted he had multiple previous driving infractions and charges, including dangerous driving while fleeing police and speeding far over the limit.
“He was apparently permitted to keep his driver’s licence, and continue to drive, in order to earn a living,” Justice Roberts stated in her written sentencing decision. “But he was clearly on notice that he had to drive carefully.”
Sobs could be heard from the mother of the killed teen as Mr. Kerr, 24, was sentenced for dangerous driving causing death. The families of the deceased and injured, some of whom sought a publication ban to keep the names of their loved ones out of the media, left the courthouse without speaking publicly.
The trial heard that the collision happened in the afternoon of Boxing Day of 2021, an unseasonably warm day that brought lots of people out onto downtown sidewalks. At the same time, Mr. Kerr was making a delivery for the company Fantuan.
Mr. Kerr saw a gap in traffic and stamped on the accelerator. Analysis of his car’s data recorder showed that within four seconds he was going 79 kilometres an hour, on a road posted with a 40-km/h limit. He collided with another vehicle, whose driver was making an illegal left turn from the centre lane, and hurtled onto the crowded sidewalk.
The judge acknowledged the role in the collision of the driver who was making the illegal left turn, but noted expert testimony that Mr. Kerr would have been able to stop in time had he not been speeding.
“This was not a freak accident,” Justice Roberts stressed, underlining these words in her judgment.
“To the contrary it was the entirely predictable consequences of the basic laws of physics playing out in a downtown space crowded with pedestrians. Given the number of people on the corner, it is fortunate more people were not hurt.”
Addressing media on behalf of the victims’ relatives, Jess Spieker, chair of the advocacy group Friends and Families for Safe Streets, decried the length of sentence.
“The family was expecting a little bit more justice to be served today,” she said. “There’s a saying among road-safety advocates that if you want to kill someone, do it with your car. If this had been any other instrument used to kill somebody this would’ve been a very different trial.”
Toronto has been trying to eliminate road fatalities and injuries through a program known as Vision Zero 2.0, introduced in 2019. The concept acknowledges that humans will make mistakes and seeks to make the result less severe through engineering changes such as tighter turn radii or narrower lanes, both of which slow drivers.
The part of Richmond Street where the collision occurred has received little Vision Zero attention beyond concrete barriers to separate cyclists from drivers. In the wake of the crash, two downtown councillors called for city staff to report back early in 2023 on ways to make Richmond safer. There’s no record in the city’s online meeting agenda archive of staff ever tabling such a report.
Toronto is also among the cities that in recent years have experienced a boom in the number of both delivery and ride-hail drivers, who are usually paid per transaction, leading to concerns about the impact these have on congestion, air quality and road safety.
“He’s in an obviously exploitative job, where he’s rushing in order to make money,” Ms. Spieker said of Mr. Kerr.
A Fantuan communications official who gave her name only as Crystal said in an email that the company was “deeply saddened” by what had happened, adding: “Our condolences go out to the victims and their families affected.”
In December, 2020, about a year before the collision, Mr. Kerr was charged with four counts of dangerous driving, related to fleeing from police. In three separate incidents later that year, he was charged with going 134 km/h in a 90 zone, 149 in a 100 zone and 80 in a 50 zone. And in 2021 he was charged with making an unsafe lane change, which resulted in a collision.
The judge’s sentencing decision was closer to the submission from the defence, which sought three years. The prosecution had urged a prison term of six years. Mr. Kerr was credited with three years for time served, leaving one more year on his sentence. He will also be banned from driving for 10 years, including the year in prison.
Oliver Moore