Canadian woman who boasted of drunk driving before killing cyclist is again jailed for drunk driving

An Ontario motorist whose social media accounts glorified drink driving and who then killed a cyclist has again been sent to prison for drink driving. Darya Selinevich was on parole having promised authorities she would never drink again.

In 2015, Selinevich uploaded a number of images to social media that effectively celebrated dangerous driving.

She posted a photo of a wine bottle in a car and another of a speedometer at 202.5 kph.

She also posted a doctored road safety poster on which she joked that in addition to a bus, cab, police car or ambulance, a fifth ride-home option when drunk was, “my car.”

Around this time, she was handed a one-year driving ban for speeding with double the legal limit of alcohol in her system. The Star reports that she was so drunk, she passed out at the police station.

A month later, on June 11, 2015, she hit and killed 44-year-old cyclist Zhi Yong Kang.

She had been drinking heavily and was travelling at 110km/h in a 60km/h zone.

She left Kang dying on the ground and then drove at speeds of up to 200km/h to try and avoid capture, at one point running a red light.

She was sentenced to seven years in jail, reduced to four and a half years for time already served, and banned from driving for 10 years.

In January 2018, she was granted day parole after telling parole board members she would never drink alcohol again and that she hoped to share her story through Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).

She was later granted full parole on condition that she did not drink.

In June of this year, she was pulled over after almost hitting another driver while swerving erratically in heavy traffic. She was found to have twice the legal alcohol limit in her blood. Police found 12 empty beer containers in the car. She had two passengers.

Selinevich pleaded guilty to the criminal charges of impaired driving and driving while disqualified and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

“She’s already killed somebody when driving drunk, and was actually on that sentence when she committed this offence,” said Crown attorney Robert De Chellis. “She just does not seem to get it.”

Selinevich’s lawyer, Jeffrey Stone, said: “She wants to accept her responsibility and move on to the difficult task of acknowledging that she is an alcoholic and acknowledging that she has to deal with that.”

Stone said that since being re-arrested, his client had lost her job at a law firm.

Imposing the jail sentence, the judge said: “The risk to other vehicles and their occupants was not an abstract risk, it was a real one that could have resulted in catastrophic consequences.”

He also imposed another 10-year driving ban, but added it was likely the ministry of transportation would revoke her licence for life.

Responding to the suggestion that Selinevich might have worked with his organisation, Andrew Murie, chief executive officer of MADD Canada, described her behaviour as “deplorable,” and said, “there’s not a chance in a million years we would work with anyone like this.”