Marco Corbin, shown playing guitar, was killed in a 2011 boating accident on Osoyoos Lake. (File photo)
The mother of a teenager killed in a boating accident on Osoyoos Lake four years ago said the devastation of losing her son hasn’t subsided at all and her family’s collective pain only increased last week when the man convicted in his death was given what she considers an “extraordinarily light sentence.”
Ryan William Symington, 30, pleaded guilty last week at the Penticton Courthouse to dangerous driving causing death and failure to stop at the scene of an accident causing bodily harm in relation to the death of Marco Corbin 18, who was tubing with friends on Osoyoos Lake on Aug. 16, 2011.
Symington pleaded guilty on the first day of a scheduled five-day preliminary hearing. He was also facing charges of impaired driving causing death, having care and control of a vessel with more than the legal amount of alcohol in his system and attempting to obstruct justice.
Symington was sentenced to 27 months in a federal penitentiary and a five-year driving prohibition following a joint submission from Crown counsel Mary Treddenick and defence council Balfour Der.
According to an agreed statement of facts presented in court, Symington had been drinking vodka and beer throughout the day, while behind the wheel of the boat he owned. Darkness had fallen around 9:15 p.m. when Symington’s boat hit a tube on which Corbin and two of his friends were riding as it was being towed by another boat.
Several witnesses on Symington’s boat told police they urged him to stop and assist, but he refused.
Symington eventually called 911 and told the operator “someone is dying in the middle of the lake,” but offered no other details. He then drove back to the boat that had been towing Corbin and had promised to follow that boat back to shore, but instead went to the location where he had been camping and instructed the girls who were with him to tell police “a man with Hells Angels tattoos” had been driving his boat, said Treddenick.
During the sentencing hearing, Judge Gail Sinclair acknowledged that the Corbin family would be very upset with the sentence imposed.
“Nothing this court does will bring Marco Corbin back,” said Sinclair. “It is even more tragic that when Marco died, his family died emotionally with him. The sentence I know will be totally unacceptable to Mr. Corbin’s family. However, I am bound by precedent.”
Elena Di Giovanni, Marco’s mother, said the sentence is “completely unfit” and she said most Canadians would be outraged if they knew all of the facts presented in court last week.
The reality is Symington will likely only have to serve one-third of his sentence – or nine months – before he’s eligible for full parole, she said.
What’s equally troubling is that he will, five years down the road, be able to drive again.
“At the very least, he should have been prohibited for life and never be allowed to drive again,” she said. “We don’t allow children to access guns and we shouldn’t allow certain people to be able to get behind the wheel of a motor vehicle ever again and he certainly fits that profile.”
When all of the facts of the case were read into the record, members of her family erupted inside the courtroom.
When Symington said “sorry to the family” after sentence was imposed, one of Di Giovanni’s sons yelled out, “It’s coming back to you. You’re a (expletive deleted) murderer,” before he and other members of her family were escorted out of the courtroom by court security officers.
Marco Corbin was in Osoyoos with several friends days before he was scheduled to begin his university career on an engineering scholarship.
He was tubing on the back of a friend’s boat when he was struck by another boat driven by Symington. He was rushed to shore, but paramedics and bystanders were unable to revive him.
After a lengthy, three-year police investigation, Symington was charged last year and spent one night in jail before being released on bail.
He continued working in the oil industry in the time since the incident in Osoyoos.
Bob Corbin, Marco’s father, told the court that finding out his beautiful son had been killed when informed by police was overwhelming.
“That’s when my life stopped. Literally,” he told the court. “It was such a seismic body blow that I went from being a totally fulfilled father and husband to, without a thought, running to my bathroom where I found a bunch of medication my mother had left, looked in the mirror and said, ‘I’m out of here.’
“No thought. No hesitation, I emptied the bottles into my mouth. After a few days in hospital, I remember coming out of my coma and I have never had one second that hasn’t been filled with the pain and poison of his loss.”
Di Giovanni told the court in her victim impact statement, “my life is now a war zone of broken doors, broken walls, broken hearts, broken relationships, broken lives and broken hope.”
Her son was a brilliant musician, award-winning athlete and student and the best brother and son any parent could ever ask for, she said.
Her family went into the courtroom last Tuesday having no idea a plea deal had been worked out and a sentencing hearing would take place, she said.
“That’s what happened … it is what it is … and we really had no say in the matter,” she said. “We became pawns in the legal process. We found out the hard way that our legal system isn’t about victims or their families, but a series of rules and regulations that favour the accused. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”
When she heard all of the details presented in court against Symington, much of it protected by a publication ban, Di Giovanni said she almost passed out.
“I felt sick to my stomach, my knees were rubber and I felt actual pain throughout my entire body,” she said.
Her entire family had spent their summer vacation in Penticton every single year since Marco was born, she said.
To have to hear the horrific details of his death and deal with the sentence imposed against Symington is a “horrible, sickening irony.”
KEITH LACEY
Osoyoos Times
