Truck driver in Laval, Que., crash that killed 4 gets 10-year sentence

Annabelle Olivier · CBC News

· Posted: May 16, 2025 10:31 AM EDT | Last Updated: 1 hr ago

A trucker who plowed into postulation connected Highway 440 successful Laval, Que., causing a monolithic pileup that killed 4 people and injured respective others, has been handed a 10-year sentence.

Quebec tribunal justice Yanick Laramée said Thursday Jagmeet Grewal, 58, a motortruck operator who failed to brake arsenic his motortruck approached a enactment of vehicles connected August 5, 2019, was negligent that time — some due to the fact that helium wasn't paying attraction to the roadworthy and wasn't expected to beryllium driving.

Grewal's licence was suspended by by the Société de l'assurance automobile du Québec (SAAQ), Quebec's automobile security board, successful 2014, due to wellness issues.

He was declared permanently unfit to enactment arsenic a motortruck operator and was granted fiscal compensation for his "total incapacity."

He lone received different licence due to the fact that of connection problems astatine the SAAQ. 

The justice said Grewal knew helium wasn't allowed to thrust and had lied to his leader and utilized a falsified papers to beryllium that helium had nary transgression record.

Crown lawyer Simon Blais called the condemnation "historic" and said it delivered a wide connection that a behaviour, specified arsenic that exhibited by Grewal, would not beryllium tolerated successful society. 

"This is an idiosyncratic who yet has nary respect for the information of others, who has acted implicit the years for his ain payment without considering society, without considering the information of roadworthy users," Blais said, adding Grewal lied repeatedly to find himself down the instrumentality connected the time of the crash.

Laramée said Grewal's actions were worse than the operator who caused the 2018 Humbolt calamity successful Saskatchewan that killed 16 members of a inferior hockey squad and injured 13 others.

That operator was sentenced to eight years.

Mariane Marsolais' father, Gilles Marsolais and his spouse Michelle Bernier, some recently retired constabulary officers, were killed successful the crash. 

"It won't bring them back, but I'm happy," she said, of Grewal's sentence. 

The defence had asked for a condemnation of six to 7 years, arguing that Grewal was supported by his family, had collaborated with the probation serviceman for the intent of a pre-sentence study and that his proceedings had been wide covered by the media.

"[These] must each beryllium considered arsenic mitigating factors oregon elements favourable to him," the defence argued, according to tribunal documents.