Trucker in fatal Highway 401 pileup in 2017 sentenced to seven years in prison
Superior Court Justice Gary Tranmer ordered additionally that Dunhill Tabanao be prohibited from driving in Canada for 12 years.
Author of the article:
Susan Yanagisawa
Ontario Provincial Police traffic accident reconstructionists investigate the scene of the crash that killed four people and seriously injured two others in May 2017 on Highway 401 east of Kingston. Photo by Ian MacAlpine /Postmedia
KINGSTON — A 41-year-old former big-rig driver from Quebec, whose inattention behind the wheel four years ago was determined at trial to have caused a six-vehicle collision on Highway 401 that killed four Kingston residents and injured both occupants of an armoured truck and a commercial driver from the Michigan, has been sentenced to seven years in prison.
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Superior Court Justice Gary Tranmer ordered additionally that Dunhill Tabanao be prohibited from driving in Canada for 12 years, comprising the full term of his federal sentence plus five years after the expiry of his warrant of committal to custody and, concluding that a mishandled transport trailer meets the definition of a lethal weapon, the judge additionally imposed a 10-year ban on Tabanao possessing firearms and certain other weapons specified in the Criminal Code of Canada.
Tabanao stood trial on charges arising from the collision on May 11, 2017, in November 2019, and lawyers involved in the case made their closing arguments for and against conviction in January 2020. Subsequent proceedings ran into unexpected delays, however, caused by COVID-19 directives from the chief justice to restrict use of the actual courtrooms at Frontenac County Court House.
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Utilizing Zoom technology, Justice Tranmer delivered his findings in June 2020, registering convictions against Tabanao on four counts of criminal negligence causing the deaths of Kingston residents Pierre Courville, 40; his wife, Christine Hanrahan, 44; her son, Mitchell Caird, 25; and Caird’s friend, Zack MacGregor, 21, and on three counts of criminal negligence causing bodily harm to Matthew Muenz-Till, the driver of a GardaWorld armoured truck overturned in the crash, 53-year-old Nathan Williams, who was the armed custodian on board, and Bradley Binder, a truck driver in his fifties. Binder received injuries to his back and knee when the empty tanker he was hauling was hit from behind by a mail carrier, knocking his truck into another transport ahead of his. Williams had a significant laceration to his scalp and spent an extended period in hospital, and Muenz-Till had extensive injuries to his legs and feet and never returned to work.
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All of the deceased were occupants of a Ford Focus caught in stop-and-go traffic shortly before 1 a.m. at the rear of the line of eastbound heavy trucks on Highway 401, between Highway 15 and Joyceville Road. Tabanao’s big rig slammed into the passenger car doing 98.9 km/h. on cruise control, without braking.
In response to a request from defence lawyer Edmund Chan, a pre-sentence report was prepared for Tabanao, which Tranmer found to be entirely positive. Last December, defence lawyer Chan and assistant Crown attorney Elisabeth Foxton — who for technological reasons took over at that point for Crown office colleague Gerard Laarhuis — delivered their submissions on sentence.
Justice Tranmer had intended to hand down his decision in January, but new waves of the virus and one request from Tabanao’s defence lawyers — Chan and Jordan Tekenos-Levy — caused a few more delays.
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In his reasons for sentence, delivered in person from the courtroom, but with Foxton and surviving family members participating via Zoom, the judge observed that both defence and prosecution lawyers had previously recognized that a penitentiary term was appropriate. In December, Foxton urged a federal term of six to eight years for Tabanao and a 15-year driving prohibition. Chan asked that his client be sent to prison for no more than three to five years and that his driving privileges be taken away for a maximum of five years.
But, “regardless of the length of jail sentence I impose today,” Tranmer said, “Mr. Tabanao will eventually be released and will be able to go home and share in the lives of his family.”
An Ontario Provincial Police traffic accident reconstructionist investigates the scene of the May 2017 crash. Photo by Ian MacAlpine /Postmedia
He said he was acutely aware that was not the outcome for the families and loved ones of the four people who perished that night. “They will continue to serve the life sentence Mr. Tabanao inflicted on them by what he chose to do or not do,” the judge said.
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He also remarked that “the horror of the crash was noteworthy and obvious” from the testimony of the drivers whose trucks were involved in the pileup and Williams, who climbed out of the overturned GardaWorld truck and saw the Ford Focus in flames. Tabanao’s sentencing, he said, would not redress their trauma or the pain and loss of those whose loved ones are now gone.
He accepted that Tabanao felt genuine remorse. In a letter of apology to the court, the former trucker wrote that he’d change the outcome of that night if he could and stated, “I will have to carry this for the rest of my life.”
The judge observed, however, that “professional drivers are under a heavy obligation to take care and pay attention when driving large commercial vehicles on our highways.” He also found that a minor collision Tabanao had in 2015, in which he rear-ended another vehicle in city traffic, was relevant. There were no injuries that time, but its cause was distracted driving on Tabanao’s part, and it was revealed during his trial here that his employer afterward required him to complete a safe-driving course.
Tranmer also noted that the other drivers involved in the pileup Tabanao had caused spoke of their despair at being unable to help the occupants of the Ford Focus, while witnesses recounted that Tabanao’s initial thoughts were for himself: “He was going to jail.”
The judge observed that “many lives have been destroyed by this single motor vehicle crash — on both sides.”
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