Another sad chapter was added to a family tragedy when a Barrie woman accepted a plea deal/joint submission on a series of charges in Barrie court on Wednesday.
Shannon Cobet, 48, who lost three family members in a fiery 2019 car crash, received a 15-month conditional sentence after pleading guilty to charges that included assault causing bodily harm and breach of release conditions.
Court heard Cobet got into a dispute with multiple victims, including an argument over a bag of potato chips that turned violent at a Circle K in Barrie.
“I want to apologize for my actions. I’m embarrassed,” Cobet told the court at her sentencing proceedings.
On Sept. 20, 2019, Cobet’s younger brother, Kyle, was driving his family northbound on Yonge Street in Bradford when his SUV crossed the centre median and slammed head-on into a southbound transport truck.
Kyle, his and Shannon’s mother Wendy, and Kyle’s nine-year-old son, Christian, were all killed.
Court heard evidence of the trauma it caused Shannon Cobet, whose legal issues began soon after.
“There is a lot of anger below the surface,” her lawyer, Denise Resnick, told the court.
The presiding judge, Enno Meijers, accepted the 15-month conditional sentence order — effectively house arrest — submitted jointly by the Crown and defence.
Cobet will be subject to strict house arrest for about the first half of the sentence, at which point conditions will be softened and a curfew will be applied.
Cobet declined an opportunity to shorten her sentence by serving a much shorter one in custody.
“I’ve (already) spent 10 days in jail. It was horrible, your honour,” she told court.
Non-contact orders toward the victims were also filed with the court.
The court heard Cobet is taking steps through court-mandated programs to deal with addiction issues, and to get trauma counselling related to losing her family in the crash.
“It’s all gone now,” Cobet told Village Media in September 2019 of the devastation she suffered after the crash that killed her family members, adding she helped raise her younger brother.
