Ontario’s police watchdog has cleared an officer of any wrongdoing in a crash between civilian vehicles that left a woman and her three young daughters dead in Brampton, Ont., earlier this year.
The Special Investigations Unit was called in to investigate police involvement in the crash because the officer had been following one of the vehicles involved.
SIU Director Joseph Martino says the Peel Regional Police cruiser tried to pull over an Infiniti, which was speeding and had no licence plates, on the afternoon of June 18.
He says it didn’t pull over, and the cruiser followed it at just over 100 kilometres per hour in a 70 zone.
Martino says the Infiniti blew through a red light and crashed into multiple other vehicles, at one point reaching an estimated 150 kilometres per hour.
Thirty-seven-year-old Karolina Ciasullo and her daughters – six-year-old Klara, three-year-old Lilianna and one-year-old Mila – were in one of those vehicles, and died of their injuries.
A man in one of the other vehicles that was struck suffered serious injuries in the crash.
Martino says the officer “did what one would expect of an officer in a marked cruiser patrolling the roadways,” and generally did so safely.
Peel police initially charged 20-year-old Brady Robertson of Caledon, Ont., the man accused of driving the Infiniti, with four counts of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death and one additional count of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle.
He was later charged with four counts of operation while impaired by drugs causing death.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2020.
The Canadian Press
