{"id":170696,"date":"2025-09-26T13:38:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T13:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/170696\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T13:38:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T13:38:15","slug":"im-here-mother-whose-3-children-were-killed-by-drunk-driver-reflects-10-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/170696\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I\u2019m here\u2019: Mother whose 3 children were killed by drunk driver reflects 10 years later"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Saturday, Sept. 27, 2025, it will be 10 years since Jennifer Neville-Lake\u2019s<\/a> three children and father were killed by a drunk driver.<\/p>\n

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Her husband died by suicide seven years after that crash.<\/p>\n

Then last year, in June 2024, her eastern Ontario home burned down with the urns holding her children\u2019s ashes inside.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m here. Because that\u2019s the reality \u2026 I am physically here. I am mentally, partially here, which is why I have assistance for many things. Emotionally, I\u2019m all over the map. But I am physically here,\u201d Neville-Lake told Global News.<\/p>\n

In 2015, her three young children were killed in a crash in Vaughan, Ont., caused by driver Marco Muzzo, whose blood-alcohol content was nearly three times the legal limit in Ontario.<\/p>\n

Muzzo had been driving home from Toronto Pearson International Airport after arriving from Miami, where he was celebrating his bachelor party.<\/p>\n

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He was speeding and ran a stop sign before his SUV T-boned the Neville-Lakes\u2019 minivan at Kipling Avenue and Kirby Road.<\/p>\n

Nine-year-old Daniel Neville-Lake, his five-year-old brother Harrison, their two-year-old sister Milly and the children\u2019s 65-year-old grandfather, Gary Neville, were killed in the collision.<\/p>\n

The children\u2019s grandmother and great-grandmother were also badly injured.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess the frustration, which has been something that my team and I have been working out, and the anger goes towards, as much as I don\u2019t want it to, the sentence and how warrant expiration occurred in July, which means he\u2019s done,\u201d said Neville-Lake.<\/p>\n

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Muzzo was sentenced to 10 years behind bars after pleading guilty in 2016 to four counts of impaired driving<\/a> causing death and two of impaired driving causing bodily harm.<\/p>\n

He was first granted day parole in April 2020 and in February 2021, Muzzo was granted full parole after serving five and a half years behind bars.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThat anger at that sentence and knowing that it\u2019s all done \u2026 no, it\u2019s not all done,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Neville-Lake picked up a photograph of her deceased family and showed it to Global News.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are finite photos. There\u2019s no tomorrow,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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Ten years since the crash, Neville-Lake described how she keeps on going.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve learned to carry my grief in a way that it\u2019s masked better,\u201d she said, adding, \u201cI don\u2019t hesitate, I don\u2019t have those pauses where I\u2019m lost in the memories.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she has created a \u201csurvival toolbox\u201d filled with coping strategies to get her through the day.<\/p>\n

The children, in her mind, will remain \u201clittle\u201d forever, but for a moment, she allowed herself to consider who they would be had they lived.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think of Daniel as he is away at some sort of school. I think it\u2019s a ballet school. That\u2019s kind of where I would have hoped he would have gone,\u201d she said. \u201cI tend to think of Harrison as being a very flamboyant teenager<\/p>\n

\u201cMilagros, I think, would have been me at the library. I think she would have been at either some sort of library or some sort like volunteer-type gig, like at the nursing home.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Neville-Lake launched a charity in honour of her loved ones called Many Hands, Doing Good<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The website explains that the charity aims, \u201cto nurture and inspire future generations and build a legacy in honour of Milagros, Harrison, Daniel and Gary.\u201d<\/p>\n

The crash that claimed the children\u2019s lives, and that of their grandfather, had been considered one of the worst impaired driving crashes in Canada at the time.<\/p>\n

Since then, there have been more.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think a lot of us felt, although there\u2019s always been horrific tragedies historically, but I think that a lot of us thought that this would be a case that was a game-changer, that who would get into a car after consuming alcohol after you read about the tragic deaths of three children, their grandfather, and the injuries of two others?\u201d said Steve Sullivan, CEO of MADD Canada.<\/p>\n

\u201cSadly we haven\u2019t seen impaired driving stop and it\u2019s unspeakable that people still make those choices, those selfish and dangerous choices,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Sullivan credited Neville-Lake with continuing to help raise awareness, as painful as it is, about the dangers and consequences of impaired driving.<\/p>\n

As for Canada\u2019s record when it comes to drunk driving, Sullivan said more could be done to improve it.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe are slowly making a little bit of progress, but having said that, there are still hundreds of people who are killed every year by an impaired driving crash, and thousands more injured. And you know we can\u2019t arrest our way out of this problem,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Sullivan pointed to technology to help offer drivers options to get home safely.<\/p>\n

\u201cTechnology is going to be, as we move into the future, a huge game-changer. There\u2019s already a lot of technology in our cars now that has an impact in terms of, you know, preventing collisions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Neville-Lake, who leads a quiet life, hopes others understand that what happened to her family could happen to anyone\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think part of it is that magical thinking that it\u2019s not going to happen to me \u2026 they could be me. They could be living my life. They could being burying all of their kids a few days before their 10th wedding anniversary,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat could be a reality.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Saturday, Sept. 27, 2025, it will be 10 years since Jennifer Neville-Lake\u2019s three children and father were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,2169,5105,43,87764,87765,44,35244,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-170696","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-canada","9":"tag-crime","10":"tag-features","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-impaired-driving","13":"tag-jennifer-neville-lake","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-ontario-crime","16":"tag-top-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-topnews","19":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}