Image: Mike Vanden Bosch / PML / Markita Kaulius recounted the loss of her daughter Kassandra as the result of a drunk driver, during an ICBC/MADD event at Sardis Secondary Friday morning. The event was designed to urge motorists to consider the impact of their decisions before driving impaired this Christmas and holiday season.

By Mike Vanden Bosch

Impaired driving

Fraser Valley mom recounts agony of losing a daughter to a drunk driver at Sardis Secondary event

Dec 9, 2022 | 11:29 AM

CHILLIWACK — Kassandra Kaulius was an active young adult working two jobs while putting herself through university and coaching the Surrey Storm junior girls softball team, in hopes she’d become a teacher one day.

After coaching a game on the night of May 3, 2011, Kassandra headed home at 10 p.m. from Athletic Park in Surrey like any other night, as told by her mother, Markita Kaulius, during an ICBC/MADD impaired driving event Friday morning (Dec. 9) at Sardis Secondary.

Kassandra never made it home to her mom and dad again.

A speeding van driving 103 kilometers an hour recklessly crashed into Kassandra’s vehicle, T-boning her driver’s side door and pushing her vehicle approximately 1,000 feet up the road. The victim’s door was crushed two feet into her side where she sat in the driver’s seat.

While the cowardly driver of the van fled the scene of the horrific collision, Kassandra lay dying.

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About an hour and a half following the collison, Markita and her husband were awakened by loud banging at their front door where they found two RCMP officers standing there with grim news to deliver.

“We were told by the police officers that there had been a catastrophic collision,” Markita said during her remarks Friday morning at Sardis Secondary. “My husband and I drove to Royal Columbian Hospital. We were praying our daughter would be OK, maybe a few broken bones but alive. We arrived at the hospital and ran to the emergency room. We waited to see Kassandra and tell her that we loved her, and we would be there to look after her.”

Markita said that as the doctor walked into the room, she could see in his eyes that the news was about to change their family. Kassandra succumbed to her injuries due to blunt force trauma and multiple injuries to her body sustained in the collision.

“We would never again be the family that we were just hours earlier,” Markita said. “My family and I live everyday with the aftermath of an impaired driver’s decision to drink and then get behind the wheel of a vehicle and drive. If only the driver had not made the decision to drive while being impaired.”

Markita’s presentation coincided with a collaborative effort undertaken by the City of Chilliwack, B.C. Highway Patrol, Safer City, ICBC, and Mothers Against Driving and Driving (MADD) Canada.

Markita described the pain of losing a daughter to an impaired driver as the worst pain a parent can ever imagine.

“My life and that of my entire family has been changed forever,” Markita said. “Every special occasion, every birthday, every Christmas, there is someone always missing from our family get togethers. There is always an empty chair at the dinner table. I get to celebrate Christmas with my daughter by looking at her photo on a Christmas ornament hanging on my Christmas tree.”

Markita cited statistics Friday indicating between 1,250 and 1,500 innocent people are killed in Canada every year by impaired drivers, equating to roughly four to six people a day that die from the actions of impaired drivers. She said drug-impaired driving has increased 43 per cent since marijuana was legalized in Canada.

“Impaired driving is 100 per cent preventable,” Markita said in concluding her remarks. “My daughter Kassandra had her life taken away from her. Sadly, instead of fulfilling her dream of becoming a teacher, a wife, [and] a mother, she became another statistic of impaired driving. Everyone deserves the right to get home safely to their family and friends this holiday season. Please be a responsible driver.”