Their lives are filled with sorrow and regret and anger.
The four adult children of Dilbag and Bakhshish Badh read victim impact statements in Surrey Provincial Court Tuesday morning, attempting to relay the emotional impact they’ve suffered since their parents’ death in a car crash nearly four years ago.
It was July 12, 2008 when Dilbag and Bakhshish were being driven home from their daughter’s engagement party in Surrey when the car they were in was hit from behind by a speeding Acura driven by Ravinder Singh Binning.
Dilbag, 61, and his wife Bakhshish, 60, who were riding in the back seat, died at the scene, their daughter Varinder suffered serious injuries, while daughter Rupi suffered less serious physical injuries.
Binning fled the scene.
In February of this year, Binning pleaded guilty to two counts of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death, one count of dangerous operation of a vehicle causing bodily harm and one count of failure to stop at the scene of an accident. His sentencing hearing began Tuesday.
Rupi Badh, 27, was driving the car hit by Binning. Through tears, she described how seeing her dad dead in the back seat and her mom lying on the pavement after being thrown from the car is a “complete nightmare.”
She said she misses not seeing her dad work in the garden or telling jokes, or her mom cooking in the kitchen. Rupi said she was always protective of her parents, but could do nothing to help them the fateful night of the crash.
Varinder Badh, whose injuries were so bad she did not learn of her parents’ deaths until two weeks after they died, said she has since become “a shell of her former self.”
Eldest daughter Jatinder Badh said she lives every day with regret, wishing she had said a proper goodbye to her parents after the engagement party.
“My heart hurts terribly and my pain is constant.”
Dilbag and Bakhshish’s son Raminder said “our family foundation has been broken and my heart has been broken.”
Crown prosecutors said they retrieved Binning’s DNA from a cigarette and straw and matched it to blood found on an airbag in the Acura. They are seeking a five-year jail term, plus a lifetime driving ban.
The court heard Tuesday that between 2002 and 2009, Binning accumulated 16 driving prohibitions, many of them involving alcohol.
In January he was sentenced in a separate case that occurred after the Badhs were killed, where he was caught driving while impaired, sped from the scene, then crashed into a fence and attempted to physically fight the officer before being restrained and arrested. Binning received 16 month probation, was fined $2,300 and prohibited from driving for 18 months in relation to that incident.
More to come…
