As he prepares to face the driver whose poor choices changed his life forever, a Surrey man is already worried that the upcoming sentence won't fit the crime.
Gurb Aujla was driving his son home from hockey practice in January 2015 when an SUV slammed into his vehicle.
"I saw these lights coming very fast, and within a second I heard a screech and boom," Aujla recalled, speaking publicly for the first time on Tuesday.
The man behind the wheel had been drinking, and Aujla's injuries were devastating.
"They basically told me that I broke my spinal cord, and I will never walk again for the rest of my life," he said. Fortunately, his son received only minor injuries.
Once an active hockey dad, Aujla spent months in hospital and at a Vancouver rehabilitation centre. He still suffers from daily pain, more than a year and a half after the crash, and is paralyzed from the chest down.
"Now the only time I can go see my kids play is if it's an arena nearby. I'll take a wheelchair taxi out there," he said.
Aujla and his wife, Amy, are preparing to face the drunk driver in court next month. Christopher Malloy pleaded guilty to three counts of impaired driving causing bodily injury, and one count of failing to remain at the accident scene.
Although Malloy's hearing is still two weeks away, Aujla's family is worried his sentence won't reflect how dramatically the driver changed their lives that night.
"We need harsher sentences," Amy Aujla said.
"We have to make it harder for a person to make that choice to drink and drive, knowing the consequences."
She said her family is still angry about Malloy's decision to drive while impaired.
"It's a choice you make to take that first drink. It's a choice you make to get behind the wheel of a car. It just makes me angry that people have this choice," she said.
With a report from CTV Vancouver's Michele Brunoro
