A 23-year-old man had more than the legal amount of alcohol in his system when his dangerous driving caused a serious crash on Highway 401 east of Cambridge, police allege.
Seven people were injured in the Sept. 29, 2016 crash in the eastbound lanes of the highway in Puslinch Township.
The collision involved a stake truck being rear-ended by an SUV.
All five people in the SUV were seriously hurt, while the two people in the truck received less serious injuries.
One of the crash victims is the owner of Kara's Smart Foods.
Gerald Kara tells CTV he was advised by his lawyer not to do an interview, but says he's "mending and moving forward," trying to focus on his business.
His truck driver is still off work.
Kara says his mind is on the other crash victims; he says he found a young woman in the bushes that had been thrown from the SUV.
One of the other victims remains in hospital.
“There still is one person in hospital, still with injuries not life threatening, but likely life altering. The other people have all been released including the accused from hospital,” said OPP Sergeant Kerry Schmidt.
Four months later, Cambridge OPP say they’ve laid a dozen charges against the driver of the SUV.Police needed to wait to lay charges because the investigation involved a number of factors.
“Obviously there was a lot of work that needed to be done. There were warrants that were executed, production orders and more follow-up investigation that needed to take place,” Schmidt said.
The 23-year-old Etobicoke man faces four charges apiece of dangerous driving causing bodily harm, impaired driving causing bodily harm, and causing a collision involving bodily harm with more than 80 milligrams of alcohol in blood.
He has a court appearance in Guelph on February 7.
With reporting by Abigail Bimman.
