Anam Laiq had wed Mander Virpal in a beautiful ceremony and the couple was looking forward to their honeymoon.
But just eight days after their wedding, in the early morning hours of Oct. 21 2018, all their plans came to a horrific end after Peel Regional Police allege a driver blew through a red light and slammed into their car at the intersection of Hwy. 50 and Castlemore Rd. in Brampton.
The bride died at the scene. Her husband survived but suffered serious injuries.
Walid Wakeel, 23, turned himself into police three days later.
At his trial that finally got underway Thursday, he pleaded not guilty to dangerous driving causing death, dangerous driving causing bodily harm, failure to stop at the scene of an accident involving death and failure to stop for an accident involving bodily harm.
“This was a terrible, tragic accident, but that is what it was — an accident,” his lawyer Greg Lafontaine wrote in an email to the Sun. “Nobody wanted this to happen and what has flowed from the accident is a considerable and lasting sadness for everyone involved and everyone (close) to them. The driving was not criminally dangerous.”
Gurdeep Neru was in her son’s Mercedes and they had stopped on Castlemore Rd. at the traffic light at Hwy. 50 when she saw a white car speed past her.
“It was fast,” she testified.
She then saw it crash into another car with a huge bang.
Georgina Cocco and her husband David Avila were travelling north on Hwy. 50 on the green light when they suddenly saw lights and smoke coming from the intersection ahead and a white car coming straight toward their Yukon before it finally came to a stop about three metres in front of them.
The couple rushed over to offer help.
Avila told Brampton court that Wakeel was the brown-skinned man in the black hoodie who emerged from the passenger side window after he couldn’t open his door. The airbags had deployed but he recalled the driver seemed confused and kept asking, “What happened?”
Avila told him he’d been in a serious accident and he should sit down but he refused. The agitated driver kept pacing and whenever he spoke, he’d pull his sweatshirt over his mouth.
“I thought I could smell alcohol on his breath,” Avila testified.
When he told him that the police were likely on their way, he became even more upset.
“He said, ‘No, no, no. Don’t call the cops. Don’t call the cops. Don’t call the cops.'”
When Avila told him the police were probably on their way already, he said he kept repeating, “Oh, no. I’ve got to call Abdul,” and then dialed a number on his cellphone.
A few minutes after his conversation on the phone, a white Honda Pilot pulled into the gas station. Avila said the driver walked over to speak to him and then went to his damaged car and rifled around. He then returned to the Pilot, got into the back seat and they left the scene.
Meanwhile, Cocco had gone to see if she could help anyone injured in the other car involved in the crash.
There was shattered glass all around the dark grey vehicle, she testified. A man in the driver’s seat was yelling, “I can’t feel my legs, can someone call 911?”
She looked to see if anyone was in the passenger seat. All she could see was a woman’s hair.
“He kept yelling, ‘Please call 911, I can’t feel my legs,’ and at that point he started shouting, ‘I can see her brains.'”
Cocco said she and the others who had come to help tried to reassure him that the ambulance was on its way.
“Mander was forced to sit next to his wife, with 2 broken legs, crying for her to wake up until paramedics could arrive,” recounts a GofundMe page set up a week after the collision. “He was then transported to a trauma centre and underwent 5 surgeries.”
The trial continues.
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