Warning: The details of this story are disturbing. Discretionary power is recommended.
Horrible details emerged Thursday during a condemnation hearing for two Indian nationals who, according to the crown, deliberately dragged a man whom they hit with their vehicle for 1.3 kilometers through Surrey – before throwing his body in the street.
The men, both 22 years old, came to Canada on international student visas and are now faced with expulsion after pleading guilty to dangerous driving, not to stop an accident and to offer help and interfere with a corpse.
“It is difficult to imagine a more extreme form of dangerous driving than to drive with a person wedged under his vehicle,” said the crown.
According to a declaration of agreed facts, Gaganpreet Singh, Jagdeep Singh and a third individual who were never charged – led Surrey to a Red Ford Mustang in the early hours of January 27, 2024.
Around 1:38 am, they left a pizza on 102 avenue near the boulevard King George with Gaganpreet at the wheel of the Mustang belonging to Jagdeep, who was seated in the front passenger seat.
At the same time, two witnesses leading north to University Drive noticed a man lying on the road and called 911 to 1h41
A few seconds later, the court heard, Gaganpreet struck the man, later identified as Jason Albert Gray.
The impact occurred as one of the two witnesses was on the phone with an operator from the 911.
The two witnesses said that the crown saw the Mustang hit Gray but did not see the victim afterwards and assumed that he was dragged.
The scary audio of the 911 call was played in court.
After the appellant declared “there is a man lying in the middle of the road”, voices can be heard saying “Oh my God, Oh my God, someone has just hit him”, followed by “Oh my God, where is he? And “Oh my god, he is stuck under the car.”
According to the declaration of the agreed facts, Gaganpreet stopped briefly at 105A avenue and University Drive – where he and Jagdeep left the vehicle and looked and under his forehead.
At 1:42 am, friends of the accused stopped in another vehicle, followed by the SUV of the two witnesses, who also stopped.
“Hey guy, there is a man under your car,” said the witness to the recording of 911.
Gaganpreet, said Crown, left with gray always under the vehicle.
The surveillance video, said that the crown shows the standing witness near the road while the accused accelerates with the body of the victim stuck to the vehicle.
After GaganPreet tried without success to dislodge the body of the 132nd street by keeping forward, stopping and reversing, the prosecutor said that he and Jagdeep fired himself in a bag and “worked in concert to dislodge the serious body of the victim”.
At that time, the crown said, the victim was died.
The surveillance video entered as an exhibition during the condemnation hearing shows that Jagdeep reversing the Mustang while Gaganpreet retains the victim, in what was finally a successful effort to dislodge the body.
Gray has undergone horrible injuries heard that the court heard and died of the touch and the drag by the Mustang.
The hand of Gaganpreet, learned the court, contained the DNA of the victim.
The crown said that the accused’s reactions after discovering that they had struck someone, making it such a serious offense.
Instead of helping the victim, Gaganpreet left with gray trapped under the Mustang while Jagdeep allowed his co-accused to go to his car.
“They acted with total indifference to the life and well-being of the victim),” said the crown.
In the impact declarations of the victims read by the Crown, the widow of Gray, identified only as YG, said that her husband’s life was taken at 45 – “the innocent victim of a horrible and horrible crime”. “They treated him like a trash can-throwing him on the side of the road,” she wrote.
YG said her husband, who noted that Crown is native, could not receive a culturally appropriate burial.
She said that her family had not heard a word from the three occupants of the vehicle to express remorse or excuses.
“JG was a fighter, he was a Sundancer, he was strong and he had a lot to live,” wrote Yg “the loss of his voice and his mind will miss deeply.”
In her declaration of impact on the victim, Gray’s mother-in-law, CS, wrote: “What they did was an unimaginable and brutal cruelty, that didn’t need to happen in this way.”
She said JG was a loving father, a good human being and a kind soul who thought of others before him.
Gaganpreet and Jagdeep addressed the court and apologized to the victim’s family.
“I never intended to do this thing,” said Gaganpreet through a Punjabi interpreter. “It happened by mistake because I was afraid.”
In a joint submission to determining the sentence, the Councils of the Crown and the Defense seek three years in prison for Gaganpreet and a three -year driving ban.
Gaganpreet’s lawyer, Gagan Nahal, noted that his client did not have a criminal record, made the guilty arguments early and demonstrated remorse.
Because he acted as a leakage driver after the body was dislodged and continued to make controversial comments on her degree of responsibility, the crown said that she was asking for a higher four -year sentence for Jagdeep and a three -year driving ban.
The court learned that the Jagdeep Mustang had been lost.
By pleading for a two -year conditional penalty, Jagdeep’s lawyer told court that his client was deeply full of remorse, the offense was “out of character” for him, and he has no criminal history in India or Canada.
Judge of the Provincial Court Mark Jette reserved his decision.
Once convicted, the Crown said that the Canada Border Services Agency would seek to expel the two men.