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A Montreal woman who drove her car into a Dollard-des-Ormeaux home at 135 km/h — while three children were sleeping upstairs — will not go to jail.

Melinda Kazandjian, who sped through the residential streets of D.D.O. on Dec. 1, 2013 and crashed into the home of Rachel Toledano, has been sentenced to 240 hours of community service and must pay $4,000 to the family whose home she destroyed — just one per cent of the $400,000 in damages she caused. The court also suspended her driver’s licence for two years.

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Judge Geneviève Graton told the court that jail time was not proper in this case because it would interfere with Kazandjian’s career opportunities as a lawyer. Kazandjian, now 29, pleaded guilty to a charge of dangerous driving in November 2017 but was allowed to finish her master’s degree in law in California before being sentenced.

The night of the incident, around midnight, Toledano and her partner had just gone upstairs when they heard a crash that sounded like an “explosion or a missile.”