A driver who killed one of his young passengers and injured three others in a horrific crash in 2007 on 0 Avenue in Langley was sentenced to two years in jail on Thursday.
Antonio Santini, 32, was also sentenced to 18 months probation and faces a five year driving ban after he gets out of jail.
He has to pay a victim surcharge and was ordered to provide the courts with a DNA sample.
The crash killed 17-year-old Mission resident Renee Newson.
In January, Santini, who is from Mission, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing death and two charges of dangerous driving causing bodily harm back in in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster.
At the time of the deadly crash, Santini, then 27, offered to take Newson, who was an acquaintance of his, and her friends out and drive them around.
The crash occurred when Santini’s 2002 Chevrolet Cavalier sedan, traveling west bound on 0 Avenue at a high rate of speed, lost control on a speed hump, sending the car airborne, shearing off a utility pole, rolling several times and coming to rest upside-down in the middle of Boundary Road, on the U.S. side of the border.
Newson was ejected from her vehicle and ended up in a ditch on the U.S. side of the road.
It’s believed she was wearing a seatbelt and the impact of the crash also dislodged and ejected the car’s seat.
A friend of Newson’s told The Times back in 2007, that her father saw the Cavalier after the crash and said there was nothing left of it.
It’s unknown what injuries Santini suffered.
Police attributed the accident to excessive speed. The other girls in the car suffered various degrees of non-life-threatening injuries.
The court also learned that Santini had been in another collision following this crash.
It isn’t known why it took five years for the case to go through the courts.
