'We're still a mess': N.S. man who lost 3 loved ones in crash speaks out over driver's sentence
CBC
The day of Oct. 21, 2023, started out well for Adam Gabriel and his family.
Gabriel, then a resident of Springhill, N.S., had driven to the Annapolis Valley for the day with his wife, Amanda, to see their son play in an Acadia Axemen university football game.
By the time the pair returned home that rainy Sunday night, they needed to pick up other family members.
Feeling tired, Gabriel stayed behind while his wife went to get their grandson, Ace Gabriel-Killen, daughter Sara and her partner, Travis Killen, in nearby Fort Lawrence, N.S., which is about 30 kilometres away.
But as the four drove in their Mitsubishi SUV along a secondary road with a speed limit of 70 km/h, they were T-boned by a rented Volkswagen Golf that passed them on a solid line as Amanda Gabriel's vehicle made a left-hand turn to get to the nearby Trans-Canada Highway.
The Golf was doing an estimated 149 km/h and had been travelling as fast as 168 km/h.
The crash killed three of the Mitsubishi's occupants, with only Sara Gabriel surviving it.
After being alerted that his family might have been involved in a crash, Adam Gabriel drove to the scene. There, he said he saw the driver of the other vehicle, Tyler Strong, get out of an ambulance. It's an image that's still with him to this day.
"All I see when I close my eyes is buddy getting out of the ambulance, jump down, big stretch and smile and he looked me right in the face, but he didn't know it was me," said Gabriel.
"But that's all I see. I don't sleep very well."
Strong was sentenced last December to 54 months in prison after pleading guilty to three counts of dangerous driving causing death and two counts of dangerous driving causing bodily harm.
It's been almost 2½ years since the crash, but Gabriel said his life hasn't resumed.
"I'm trying, but everybody gives you advice, all 'You got to do this, you got to do that,'" he said. "Shut up. You don't know. There's no book for this and everybody that says it has not been through something like this.
"It don't get better. You just gotta learn to live with it, really."
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