Dangerous Speed/Heedless Danger

Young and male, fascinated with speed and motor vehicles.  It's a simple enough formula, and it is one that all too often spells trouble for someone.  In this instance, the young male's date with destiny has altered his future beyond recognition, for it has made him a double murderer.  He was not intoxicated when he put himself behind the wheel of his 1992 Nissan, nor was he under the influence of recreational drugs. 

But he was most certainly infatuated with speed and under its influence his vehicle became a deadly, blunt instrument of death.  The Nissan was a high-performance sports car with six cylinders, twin turbochargers and after-market modifications whose purpose was to increase power and performance.  Although its tires had passed a safety check previously, at the time of the deadly accident they were severely worn.

The young man was interested in speed, but his was a solo passion, and he was not racing someone else in a similarly equipped vehicle in any kind of road contest.  Nor was the young adult the least bit interested in stunt-driving.  His focus was entirely on attaining speed and achieving the obvious thrill that it gave his testosterone-fuelled imagination.

His passion for speed caused the death of two young parents of three young children.  Simon Banke spun the wheels of his sports care, fishtailed it out of control as the tires squealed, and drive directly into a temporary bus stop.  He was 20 when that happened, and is now two years older, as he attends his trial.  He did not hesitate to admit to the judge that he was driving at a "dangerously high rate of speed.

It was a rain-slicked street in downtown Ottawa when his car slid sideways out of control on September 16, 2010.  This is a date on a calendar that three young girls will always remember as they mourn the loss of their parents throughout their lives.  Simon Banke's Nissan 300 ZX rammed straight through a concrete/wood bench, through two newspaper boxes, through a concrete garbage can and a bus stop sign.

And then it struck Leo Paul Regnier, hitting a curb while carrying him along and finally tossing him to the pavement, pinned beneath the car.  Seconds before, the car had struck Sherrianne Regnier, slamming her into a marble pillar where she struck her head, sustained a skull fracture and fractured vertebrae, then took three days to die in intensive care.  Her husband died at the scene from a ruptured aorta.

Their three children, Sarah, 15, Jessica, 13 and Isabella, 9, became instant orphans.  They now live with an aunt, and although they weren't in the courtroom to view the face of the young man whose escapade left them bereaved and bereft, other family members were.  Six of Leo Paul Regnier's siblings were in attendance.

"He needs to know what he did was wrong.  He took away two lives, he took away a set of parents, he took away a brother, a sister.  It's not a little joke here, it's not a little boy playing a game on the roads.  I want my little brother back.  I want my sister-in-law back.  I'm sure the kids want their mommy and daddy back", Leo Paul's sister Suzanne Baker said in pain.

No one involved in this tragedy will have been unscathed, least of all the three girls.  And Simon Banke will most certainly be changed, for within the space of an eyeblink he turned from a carefree young man exercising his thoughtless fascination with achieving great speed that he never imagined he could not control, to a man whose nightmares will never end.

This is the kind of misfortune that irrevocably alters peoples lives with the pain of irretrievable loss and for which there is no cure, and little justice to be had.