Driver who killed grandmother, beloved bus driver sentenced to prison for head-on crash

Leo Michel, 55, pictured in this undated photo. (Facebook)

Warning: Readers may find details in this article disturbing and triggering.

A Sudbury, Ont. man convicted of dangerous driving causing death in an April 2022 head-on crash has been sentenced to prison for another three years.

Leo Michel, 55, was handed a four-and-a-half-year sentence minus time served in pre-sentence custody by Justice Howard Leibovich for causing the death of 66-year-old Irene Youngblut along Highway 12 near Coldwater.

Michel, who was initially out on bail, was arrested last summer in Sudbury when he absconded ahead of his pretrial. He pleaded guilty in November, admitting to crashing his Mitsubishi head-on into a Chevy Spark driven by Youngblut at about 5 a.m. April 7, 2022, while Youngblut was headed to work as a bus driver with Orillia Transit.

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The court heard the vehicles were “unrecognizable.” The judge described Michel having a “cocktail of illegal drugs” in his system at the time of the crash when he veered into oncoming traffic. Michel was found with cocaine, fentanyl, methadone, and THC in his system. Michel escaped the crash with a broken leg. Youngblut died of multiple impact traumas, the court heard.

Justice Howard Leibovich said while he found Michel was remorseful for his actions, Michel has a lengthy criminal record with 22 convictions dating back 30 years. While he had been sober for about 18 years, he said he relapsed two years prior to the deadly crash when his wife left him.

Youngblut was a beloved school and city bus driver. The court heard she had survived COVID, which included being placed in a coma and on a ventilator, and had just returned to work when Michel took her life that morning.

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Her family said it continues to struggle with the tragic passing of a cherished mother, sister, friend, grandmother and wife.

“It has been a long four years of heartache and emotional suffering from our loss and reliving the awful tragedy of our mom’s death,” said the Youngblut family. ”Our whole justice system is so very broken. We will never be happy with the outcome. He killed our mom by driving impaired and being reckless. Driving is a privilege; he abused that privilege, and our mom had to pay for that.“

The family said it focused on moving forward while remembering the “loving person” Youngblut was.

As part of his sentence, Michel will be banned from driving for ten years.