An Oshawa man has pleaded guilty to a host of charges after a head-on crash near Whitchurch-Stouffville, Ont., last year that killed a father of three and injured his wife and young daughters.
Jaiwin Victor Kirubananthan, 19, pleaded guilty in a Newmarket courtroom Monday to dangerous driving causing death, failing to remain at the scene of a crash where death ensued, and three counts of dangerous operation of a vehicle in connection with the crash that killed 35-year-old Andrew Cristillo on Aug. 3 of 2025.
Speaking outside court Monday, Cristillo’s brother, Jordan, said he wants to see Kirubananthan face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, especially considering police say he was already facing charges at the time of the crash for hitting an Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) vehicle that Premier Doug Ford was travelling in on Highway 401 in January of last year.
“We’re living a nightmare. This is something no family ever wants to experience,” Jordan Cristillo said. “You have three little girls that have to grow up without a father. You have his loving wife, who has to raise these kids while also dealing with her own health conditions without her best friend by her side.
“And you have a man who was the life of every party — the best person to have around, that’s been robbed from all of us.”
An agreed statement of facts presented in court details how Kirubananthan drove recklessly and at high speeds leading up to the crash.
It was the Sunday evening of the August civic holiday long weekend last year when a then 18-year-old Kirubananthan first left Point Provincial Park in Sutton West in his father’s Toyota SUV.
Kirubananthan then drove south on Highway 48 in “a dangerous manner,” going “well above” the road’s posted 80 km/h speed limit, according to the statement of facts. At one point he reached a speed of 136 km/h, drove south in a northbound lane “at excessive speed,” and had to cut in front of a southbound vehicle to avoid a head-on crash with another car going north.
While at a red light at the intersection of Mount Albert Road, Kirubananthan used the right turning lane to skip in front of a car stopped in the southbound lane at the light, the court documents read, before he continued south.
At around 9:17 p.m., Kirubananthan steered his SUV into the northbound lanes of Highway 48 while continuing to drive south. The court documents note a driver Kirubananthan had previously cut off on the highway spotted what was happening, then remarked to his passenger “he’s in the wrong lane.”
“He’s going to hit someone,” the passenger replied.
It was about this time that Kirubananthan realized he was about to hit someone going north in the northbound lane, so he braked and steered to the west, the court documents read. “Almost simultaneously,” according to the statement, Christina Cristillo, who was driving northbound in a Nissan SUV with her husband and kids in the car, hit her brakes and also steered to the west.
The two SUVs then slammed into each other near the centre of the roadway. Kirubananthan was going 139 km/h while driving in the wrong lane just seconds before the crash, the statement of facts says, while Cristillo was going a touch under the speed limit.
Other drivers stopped at the scene and approached Kirubananthan’s vehicle, but the driver’s side door was open and no one was inside, the court documents read. It was then that they heard Christina Cristillo’s cries for help — she had managed to escape the wreck, but her husband and their three kids, Leah, 7, Chloe, 6, and Ella, 4, were trapped in their SUV.
Motorists managed to free two of the children, while a third was extracted by emergency crews. The girls were rushed to hospital and diagnosed with injuries including concussions, broken bones and lacerations, the court documents say.
Andrew Cristillo was also trapped in the front passenger seat, and couldn’t immediately be extracted, according to the statement of facts. He was pronounced dead at the scene at 10:04 p.m., and a post-mortem exam found his death was caused by multiple traumas.
Kirubananthan’s cellphone and wallet were found in his family’s SUV, but he was nowhere to be found. At 6:06 a.m. the next morning, OPP officers deployed a thermal imaging drone to find the driver — and minutes later, officers discovered Kirubananthan lying in a potato field about 150 metres east of the crash site, the court documents read.
The agreed statement of facts notes he originally told police he wasn’t the one driving his father’s SUV. It also says he had a seatbelt mark over his left shoulder and had suffered a fractured pelvis in the crash.
Premier Ford met with Cristillo’s family after the August crash and introduced legislation in November to bring in stricter dangerous driving penalties.
The law, named for Cristillo, would impose lifetime licence suspensions for anyone convicted of dangerous driving causing death, allow police to immediately suspend a driver’s licence for 90 days and impound their vehicle if they are suspected of driving dangerously, and increase fines and vehicle impoundment periods for driving with a suspended licence.
Jordan Cristillo told reporters Monday that he thinks it’s “insane” that a person could hit the province’s highest-ranking politician, be back on the road within weeks and then rip a family apart.
“It just shows that this person had no care, consideration for any life he impacts on the road,” he said. “It just shows that this person should never have been back behind the wheel after the first accident that was equally egregious with Premier Ford.”
Kirubananthan is scheduled to be back in court on June 22.
