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She was also suffering from insomnia and an eating disorder and about a year before the crash discovered her husband had been having an affair.

“At that point, my whole world came down,” she said, briefly breaking down in tears.

Natsis described how she began to drink, opening a bottle of wine two or three nights a week, but still managing to get up for a 5:30 a.m. run with girlfriends and maintain a mask that life was normal even as it descended into “chaos.”

Photo by Handout photo / Casey family

The morning of March 31, Natsis had an argument with her husband, then “puttered around the house” in Pembroke before leaving for an afternoon hair appointment at Ottawa’s Rinaldo’s hair salon. While there, she got a text from her brother-in-law asking to meet for drinks at the Crazy Horse Saloon in Kanata. She told the hearing she consumed two large, eight-ounce glasses of wine over the course of an hour, but the two argued when they discussed her marital problems.

She went to her car and left abruptly, frantic to get home. She doesn’t remember striking another car in the parking lot as witnesses testified at her trial.

Under questioning, she admitted to “self talk” that she shouldn’t be behind the wheel.

“I was feeling impaired. I shouldn’t be driving,” she said. “At that point, I wasn’t thinking about the consequences at all. All I wanted to do was to get out of there.”

Natsis told the panel that she had never driven impaired before and was ashamed of her actions.

“I’m usually a measured, well-thought-out person.”