MANDEL: 'He is a menace on our streets,' judge says of killer driver

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Kalyan Trivedi should never have been behind the wheel of a car, let alone treated the Gardiner Expressway as his personal race car circuit.

“His disregard for the safety of innocent members of the public is disgraceful,” said Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy as she sentenced the speeding driver to five years in prison for slamming into the rear of a car and killing mom of three, Norma Buendia, 58.

“The speed was grossly excessive, as was the manner of driving. There was no excuse for it whatsoever,” she wrote in a recent decision. “The lives of everyone on those highways were endangered. The results were predictable, perhaps even inevitable.  Further, given Mr. Trivedi’s prior speeding convictions, it would appear that this manner of driving was not unusual for him.”

Molloy called the 33-year-old’s driving record “nothing short of shocking” and found that his long list of previous driving infractions demonstrated the extent to which Trivedi “has completely disregarded driving rules for his entire driving history,” starting in 2008 when he was 17.

Between then and Oct. 22, 2021, when he was banned from driving as a term of his bail, he’d amassed 29 convictions on his driving record, including 11 for speeding. “I also note that there were three separate speeding offences within eight months of this dangerous driving offence, and that many of the speeding offences involve speeds that were grossly in excess of the speed limit.”

And those were just the times he was caught. Then came that tragic early morning.

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It was about 1:30 a.m. on Oct. 3, 2021 when witnesses described Trivedi “just flying” in his expensive Audi R8 south on Hwy. 427 and then east across the Gardiner, weaving and impatiently flashing his high beams for cars to get out of his way as he sped between 150 km/h and 200 km/h on the 90 km/h highway.

Meanwhile, doing the speed limit in a grey Nissan Sentra was Roberto Navarro Vega, 61, as he and his wife were on their way to pick up their son from a friend’s house in Toronto.

Buendia was already in her pyjamas at their Mississauga home when their son called for a ride, but she’d insisted on accompanying her husband so she could help navigate with the GPS on her phone. It was a generous gesture by the much-loved woman who would pay so dearly for her kindness.

Hit from behind, their car was sent hurtling into the concrete divider and then flipped. Buendia died at the scene. Her husband sustained serious injuries that required two months in hospital and left him catastrophically impaired. And Trivedi? He just walked away from the crash without identifying himself as the driver.

He turned himself in two weeks later after police traced his car and only pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing death and dangerous driving causing bodily harm on the eve of his trial.

No wonder the judge could barely contain her contempt.

“Mr. Trivedi has a deplorable driving record, which includes numerous speeding violations as well as persistently driving without a valid permit, even after recently receiving tickets for that same offence. He simply refuses to follow the rules. He is a menace on our streets and highways,” she wrote.

“And in the face of what must have looked to be catastrophic injuries to the two people in the Nissan, Mr. Trivedi simply walked away from the scene. No explanation for that cowardly behaviour was ever presented.”

Molloy noted his expression of remorse, but had scathing words for his annual $1,000 donation to his Hindu temple in Buendia’s memory.

“She was not Hindu. That donation is not a tribute to her; it is a message to his own community about what a great guy he is. I consider it more self-centered than truly remorseful.”

Rejecting his lawyer’s argument that Trivedi should be sentenced to just three years, Molloy imposed a five-year prison term and 10-year driving ban after his release as a deterrent to others.

“The message must be sent, strong and clear, that this conduct will not be tolerated,” she brilliantly wrote. “Dangerous drivers turn a mode of transport into a killing machine, without regard to the carnage they cause.

“This is a serious danger to the public and must stop.”

mmandel@postmedia.com