The parents of a four-year-old boy who was killed in a bus accident in Horseshoe Bay last year say that months after the tragedy, they still have few answers about what happened.
Eight months later, Silvana Schramm remembers only fragments of the crash.
Her four-year-old son, Leonardo, was killed when an articulated bus jumped the curb in Horseshoe Bay.
Silvana was left with catastrophic injuries.
After months in the hospital and dozens of surgeries, Silvana has recovered enough to go home and may be able to leave GF Strong in March.
However, rebuilding their lives has proven far more difficult as Silvana and her husband, Clineu Machado, say they still don’t know exactly what happened that day to prevent it from happening to anyone else.
“That is the main goal,” Machado said.
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“It is not about money. Something happens and we learn as a society. Make sure it doesn’t happen again. And to do that, we need information. We need the investigation to be concluded and get all the information.”
According to the family’s lawyers, TransLink has provided maintenance records for the bus and a heavily-redacted incident report, but has not provided any information about the driver or their training.
West Vancouver police have not provided any information at all.
In a statement to Global News, police said that the investigation is complex and could take more than a year to complete.
The family says they’re unable to move forward until a final report is released.
Under B.C.’s no-fault insurance system through ICBC, there is no path to civil litigation, which they argue leaves them without accountability.
“But when it is a big tragedy like happened to us, or the one that happened just weeks before at Lapu Lapu, I think ICBC should have a different approach,” Machado said.
“You can’t measure different magnitude events with the same rule.”
For Leonardo’s parents, what matters most now is understanding what happened.
“Nothing is going to bring my son back to me,” Silvana said.
“All we have is to hope.”
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