The drunk driver who killed 22-year-old Kassandra Kaulius has been released from jail.
Natasha Warren walked out of the Alouette Correctional Centre for Women on Thursday after spending two years behind bars, a sentence Kaulius’s mother feels was far too short.
“She has really served so little time,” Markita Kaulius said. “But she gets to go home to her family today. She gets to carry on with her life, and I have a daughter at home in ashes.”
Warren had downed a bottle-and-a-half of wine when she ran a red light in Surrey and T-boned Kaulius’s car in May 2011. She ran away from the scene rather than call 911, a detail that still haunts Kaulius’s mother.
“I’m still angry for the fact that she left my daughter to die in the street,” she said. “She had a cell phone. Had she called 911, would they have gotten there earlier to save her?”
Since Kaulius’s death, 3,000 people have been killed by drunk drivers in Canada, something her mother believes can be curbed with harsher sentences.
The Kaulius family has lobbied the federal government to make impaired driving causing death carry a minimum of five years in prison.
Warren will be on probation for the next year and live with her mother in Port Coquitlam. She’s also under an eight-year driving ban.
With a report from CTV Vancouver’s Lisa Rossington
