A Toronto man has been handed a five-year prison sentence for criminal negligence causing death stemming from a dump-truck crash where a man died under his watch.
Milton Urgiles, 47, allowed Denis Garant to get behind the wheel of the vehicle despite Garant raising concerns about its road worthiness.
“A significant penitentiary sentence is required,” Superior Court Madam Justice Mary Vallee said in passing sentence at the Barrie courthouse on Tuesday.
The Crown had asked for a sentence of six years, while Urgiles’ lawyer, Alonzo Abbey, had asked for a two-year conditional term.
“Once again, I ask for everyone’s forgiveness,” Urgiles said through a Spanish interpreter. “May God forgive me.”
Court heard evidence how Garant, 53, a married father or two, had sent Urgiles a text on Sept. 21, 2020, saying that the “steering cuts in and out” on the dump truck provided to him by the company where Urgiles was a supervisor.
Urgiles seemingly ignored the message and responded instead with the following day’s work site details.
Court heard evidence that Urgiles briefly inspected the vehicle at the end of day, but otherwise did nothing.
The indifference cost Garant his life.
The next day, Garant lost control of the dump truck. It ran off the road just outside Alliston, through traffic coming the other direction, and then collided with a tree.
Garant was killed instantly and had been on the job a little more than a week.
Though Urgiles had no criminal record and was otherwise a law-abiding citizen, he had a spotty safety record driving a dump truck and operating his own company, court heard.
In passing sentence, Vallee strongly inferred that the company he was working for was set up such that Urgiles’ poor driving record was obscured despite his supervisory role in running the business.
“(Urgiles) essentially ran the company,” said Vallee.
That company was owned by Janeth Zambrano, his common-law partner. She held the required licence. Urgiles’ had been pulled, at least in part, from his poor safety record from when he previously owned a similar business.
“He should not have been training anyone,” Vallee said.
Vallee cited case law from an infamous incident in Toronto where a shift supervisor allowed men under his watch to board a “swinging stage” at height without the required safety harnesses. The stage, effectively a window-washing platform, collapsed and four men plunged more than 100 feet to their deaths on Christmas Eve in 2009.
The manager in that case was given 42 months in jail, but Vallee said Urgiles’ responsibility was more acute in Garant’s death because it represented a continual negligence in allowing the dump truck’s tires and alignment mechanism to degrade, rather than a one-off lapse of judgment the Toronto incident entailed.
Vallee also heavily criticized Zambrano for disappearing during the trial. Required to testify, she failed to show for court and the judge used the word “fugitive,” per the Canadian Oxford dictionary’s definition of the term, to describe her absence.
Vallee said Urgiles’ role in Zambrano not testifying was an aggravating factor in passing sentence.
“She could not be found,” Vallee explained. “… Mr. Urgiles harboured a fugitive.”
With Vallee departed from the courtroom, a bailiff allowed Urgiles’ friends and family to bid him farewell. The first and last one to hug and kiss him goodbye was Zambrano, before Urgiles was led away in handcuffs.
