Woman pleads guilty in crash that killed 2 teens in Winnipeg

A woman has pleaded guilty in a crash in Winnipeg that killed two teenage girls in 2010, but the father of one of the victims says the pain of losing his daughter will never go away.

Court heard on Monday that the woman, who was 17 years old at the time, was drunk, speeding on cruise control and texting when she blew through a solid red light without braking early in the morning of Oct. 31, 2010.

The woman's Cavalier slammed into a Pontiac Sunfire at the intersection of St. Mary's Road and Bishop Grandin Boulevard at 2:55 a.m.

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The Sunfire was carrying five people who were heading home from a Halloween party. Two of the passengers died from their injuries: Senhit Mehari, 19, and Amutha Subramaniam, 17.

​An 18-year-old woman was hospitalized in critical condition, another person was seriously injured, and a fifth person was treated in hospital for non-life-threatening injuries.

"I lost my daughter. We're not going to get her back," Yohannes Mehari told CBC News late Monday.

"It will never go, the pain and suffering."

On Monday, court was told that the driver of the Cavalier had a graduated licence and was not supposed to consume any alcohol. Her blood alcohol reading at time was between 0.07 and 0.12. The legal limit in Manitoba is 0.05.

She pleaded guilty to two counts of criminal negligence causing death and two counts of criminal negligence causing bodily harm.

Crown seeking adult sentence

Because the driver of the Cavalier was a youth at the time of the crash, her name is protected from publication under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

The Crown is applying for the woman to receive an adult sentence. A hearing to determine if she will be sentenced as an adult is at least two months away.

Yohannes Mehari said he's been waiting for justice for almost four years since his daughter died.

"For somebody who lost a bright daughter, it was very hard for us to really cope. It affected our lives in a very deep way, and the fact that it took four years … is really long overdue, this day," he said.

Of the Cavalier driver, he said, "She violated every traffic rule, so as far we are concerned we shouldn't have waited [so] long like this…. The past four years, for us, it was very difficult."

Yohanna Asghedom, who was driving the Sunfire that was struck, has since recovered from her injuries and has helped start a Students Against Impaired Driving group at the University of Manitoba.

"Texting especially is becoming a really big issue among young people," Asghedom said.

"So what happened to us girls … I don't want to use [this] as an example because I do feel like it's a very extreme and very unfortunate case. However, I do feel like cases like this are not as uncommon as people think."