‘Atrocious’ serial speeder pleads guilty after crash that killed woman

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He has an “atrocious” rap sheet for speeding, but that didn’t stop Kaylan Trivedi from flying across the Gardiner Expressway in his expensive Audi R8, weaving and impatiently flashing his high beams for cars to get out of his entitled way.

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It was a tragedy waiting to happen.

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It was about 1:30 a.m. on Oct. 3, 2021. Roberto Navarro Vega, 61, and his wife Norma Buendia Flores, 58, were in a grey Nissan heading from their Mississauga home to pick up their son from a friend’s house in Toronto — the mother of three was already in her pyjamas when they got the call, but insisted on accompanying her husband so she could help him navigate with the GPS on her phone.

Suddenly behind them, the Audi sportscar must have come like a bat out of hell. Witnesses said Trivedi, a week shy of his 32nd birthday, was travelling between 150 and 200 km/h on the 90-km/h highway with one saying it was “like watching a NASCAR vehicle go by us.”

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He slammed into the rear of the couple’s car, setting the two vehicles spinning in opposite directions before crashing together again. The crash reconstructionist couldn’t estimate the Audi’s speed at the initial collision, but said it was still going about 122 km/h at the second one.

The crushed Nissan was sent hurtling into the concrete divider and flipped — killing Flores and leaving her husband with a fractured pelvis and injuries to his knees and back that required two months in hospital.

Despite causing the deadly crash, police said Trivedi and his passenger, lawyer Mandeep Brar, didn’t stick around. According to the agreed statement of facts, Brar walked away from the crash and “despite numerous attempts by police, Mr. Brar has, to this day, refused to provide a statement about the collision.”

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If true, then as a sworn officer of the court, how shameful is that?

Trivedi tried to assist, but after about 15 minutes he, too, left the scene without identifying himself as the driver. “He chose to think only of himself,” Crown attorney Michael Wilson told the court.

He only turned himself into police two weeks later.

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Trivedi pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing death and dangerous driving causing bodily harm, but the prosecutor said that only came “at the last minute” before the start of his trial.

Wilson urged Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy to sentence him to five to 5 1/2 years for the dangerous driving causing Flores’s death and a concurrent three years for causing Vega’s injuries as well as a 10-year driving ban to “send a message that this kind of behaviour will not be tolerated.”

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Trivedi has 11 convictions for speeding, including an alarming 149 km/h in 100-km/h zone in 2016 and going twice the 60-km/h limit in 2015. “His driving record is atrocious,” the Crown said. “For over a decade, Mr. Trivedi has operated a motor vehicle with a blatant disregard for the rules and the safety of those around him.”

After each conviction, he said Trivedi had the opportunity to reflect on the danger his driving was posing to the community. And still he continued for one reason: His own selfish need for speed. “He liked to drive fast. And for his enjoyment, a life was lost, an individual was severely injured and a family was decimated.”

Flores’s husband and two of her children poured out their pain in the downtown courtroom. “I was a simple and happy man, without wealth, but I had a great treasure: My wife and my family. Until it was taken away by an irresponsible driver and leaving me on the verge of death,” Vega said in his victim impact statement.

“I don’t understand the recklessness of it all,” her daughter Natalia Gonzalez told the court. “She was a really good person to everyone, caring, loving and always put others above herself. She did not deserve to die as needlessly as she did.”

In a four-minute speech, Trivedi apologized for the pain and suffering he has caused and accepted full responsibility.

“There’s not a day that I don’t wish and pray that it was my life that was taken and not Ms. Flores,” he told the family. “I will forever be haunted by this tragedy.”

Molloy has reserved her decision to July.

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