In a downtown courtroom filled with sadness and tears, a Toronto mother was convicted Tuesday of a Highway Traffic Act offence — and fined the maximum $100 — for failing to prevent her idling SUV from rolling away empty and killing a five-year-old cancer survivor.

Kindergarten student Camila Torcato was leaving St. Raphael Catholic School in Downsview on the afternoon of Jan. 15, 2018 when the unoccupied Hyundai Sante Fe struck her father, Amilcar Torcato, and Camila and pinned them against his vehicle.

Teacher Salvatore Cigna reversed the Hyundai and released the pair. Torcato suffered minor leg injuries and his daughter was pronounced dead in hospital a few hours later. She had recently started school after being treated for cancer at age three.

Luana Barbosa Brambila, the Hyundai’s owner, was charged under the Highway Traffic Act for failing to take the necessary “precaution against vehicle being set in motion.”

The section reads: “No person shall park or stand a vehicle on a highway unless he or she has taken the action that may be reasonably necessary in the circumstances to prevent the vehicle from moving or being set in motion.”

On Tuesday, after a two-day trial in June, Justice of the Peace Tina Wassenaar said she found Barbosa Brambila did not take the “reasonably necessary” circumstances to prevent her vehicle from moving after she jumped out to retrieve her daughter from the school.

She left her vehicle, with the engine running, in a no parking area on a snowy street with a slight incline under “hectic circumstances.” Students were gathered for pickup and while drivers required “heightened vigilance,” Barbosa Brambila “did not ensure her vehicle was parked as safely a possible,” Wassenaar said reading from her ruling. Court heard she also did not apply the parking brake.

Barbosa Brambila, 31, leaned forward, head bowed and clutching a rosary, comforted by her husband, while officer in charge and prosecutor, Jamie MacPherson, fought back tears.

MacPherson said the maximum penalty imposed — $100 — was “wholly inadequate.”

“This was a senseless accident that had a horrendous result,” the prosecutor said. But, she added, this was also not just one “faux pas,” since Barbosa Brambila parked in a prohibited area, left the car on, and failed to engage the parking brake.

The little girl’s mother’s anguish was captured in a victim impact statement read in court. Listening at the back of the court was her husband, who was overcome with emotion.

“It feels like one long miserable day with no beginning and no end. It feels like a terrible terrible nightmare I can’t wake up from,” Catarina Rodrigues De Almeida wrote.

At the age of three, Camila was diagnosed with cancer and had to endure six months of chemotherapy and had three surgeries, one to remove a kidney, the victim impact statement said.

But after persevering and six months of remission, Camila began her first year of school, where she was thriving, and living a “healthy and happy life.”

“Unfortunately, our hopes and dreams for her were tragically cut short on the afternoon of Monday, January 15, 2018. On that day, my family’s life was turned upside down and will never be the same again.”

Outside the Old City Hall courthouse, defence lawyer Robert Guerts said the decision means drivers can still be liable for something that happens if they leave a car idling without the parking brake on.

His client, he said, is “absolutely devastated.”

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“Her daughter, and the deceased were friends, they were in the same class, so she can resonate completely with the loss suffered. It’s just incomprehensible. I can’t imagine losing a child of my own, I can’t imagine taking a child of someone else. That is the predicament my client is in.”

He called the tragedy a “perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances.”