A North Hastings woman will serve three and a half years in prison after pleading guilty to dangerous
driving causing death after an incident on Belleville’s Meyers Pier in late June of 2021.
Thirty-nine year-old Stephanie Osborne was sentenced Friday morning by Superior Court Justice
Kristin Muszynski in a Belleville courtroom.
Shortly after 4 a.m. on June 27, Osborne crashed a pickup truck through steel barricades at the pier driving straight into a wooden bench where security guard Larry Tilander was sitting.
Osborne, the truck, and Tilander ended up in the Bay of Quinte. She was taken to hospital while Tilander’s body was discovered a few hours later.
See more details from a previous story on the matter here.
Madame Justice Muszynski considered her sentence “fit and just” due to the harm caused by dangerous driving to Mr. Tilander, his family, and the wider community.
However, she did believe Osborne was genuinely remorseful and was unlikely to reoffend.
Osborne did admit to “smoking a joint” a few hours before the collision but impairment by alcohol or drugs was never proven.
Court heard that Osborne had had a challenging upbringing, had been a teenage alcoholic and illegal drug user and had been in abusive relationships in her youth although was now in a stable common-law relationship.
The mother of four children has not consumed alcohol for some time, smokes marijuana only to help her sleep, and has been and is receiving counselling.
