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Before giving her reasons, Fuerst said she received unsolicited messages from members of the public, which she filed with the court and said she ignored for the purposes of sentencing.

Muzzo’s mother wiped her eyes while the dead children’s mother, Jennifer Neville-Lake, sobbed quietly.

Last September Muzzo, the 29-year-old heir to a billion-dollar construction fortune, was returning from his own bachelor party in Miami. He landed just after 3 p.m., having had an unspecified number of drinks on the plane, on top of a late-night drinking session the night before. His story was that he did not realize he was drunk, although after the crash, he blew three times over the legal limit, so high that the law requires this to be treated as an aggravating factor.

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He collected his Jeep Cherokee from the airport garage and headed north to his home in Vaughan, an affluent suburb north of Toronto near where his family lived.

He ran a stop sign near Kleinburg and collided with a Grand Caravan, which had the right of way, carrying the Neville-Lake children on their way home to Brampton. They had been at a sleepover with their grandparents, Neriza and 65-year-old Gary Neville, and their great-grandmother, Josephina Frias. The two women survived the crash. Neriza was driving, and was “entirely blameless,” Judge Fuerst said.

The injuries to the others were catastrophic. Harrison (Harry), 5, died in hospital about midnight, holding his two-year-old sister Milly’s hand, after doctors placed them together, knowing nothing could save them.