Mohammad Anas Ashna said life was good in Canada until around 2 a.m. on July 4, when the Kia he was driving with his wife, daughter, sister-in-law and mother-in-law was hit from behind by an Audi Sedan. on the eastbound Gardiner Expressway near Dufferin Street. According to police, the Audi was traveling at a high speed just before the collision.
The family returned to Toronto after spending a day and evening in Niagara Falls. Videos shown to Global News showed Anas and his wife and son enjoying tourist attractions, followed by a picnic with more than a dozen members of their extended family. Ashna says he barely remembers anything about the crash because he fell unconscious.
Anas said the family came to Toronto as refugees from Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Jan. 1, 2024, and settled there until everything changed in an instant. Ashna’s 41-year-old mother-in-law Fazlia Shirzad was killed in the collision, his 21-year-old sister-in-law remains in St. Michael’s hospital with multiple fractures to her arms and legs, and his two-year-old sister-in-law-old daughter Simara was hospitalized after the collision was rushed to Sick Kids with a nosebleed and head injury.
He says his wife, who was also a passenger in the Kia he was driving, has constant back pain. On Friday, Ashna took Simara back to the hospital because she was having trouble walking.
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“Life was good before the accident, but now it is not good for me,” Ashna said. The family buried Shirzad last Saturday. Her cousin Naquibullah Qudrat, who was in a car in front of Ashna’s on the night of the collision, said Shirzad’s life “is beyond repair” and the family wants justice.
“The whole family has been destroyed,” Qudrat said.
Vance Kong, 48, appeared in court Friday for a bail hearing wearing an orange jumpsuit from a video room at the Toronto South Detention Centre. Kong, who is charged with six charges including drunk driving causing death, dangerous driving causing death and failure to stop at the scene of an accident causing death, was released on $75,000 bail.
On the day of the fatal crash, Toronto police said in a news release that witnesses reported seeing the driver of the Black Audi, which collided with the rear of the Kia sedan, fleeing the scene on foot.
Vance Kong appeared via video from the Toronto South Detention Center on Friday, July 5, 2024.
Investigators believed Kong may have been picked up by a taxi driver or taxi driver at Lakeshore Boulevard and Spadina Avenue.
Following his arrest, sources told Global News that Kong was arrested by police in Durham Region before being taken back to Toronto.
The conditions for Kong’s release include staying with his father, who is his guarantor. He is prohibited from driving a motor vehicle or sitting in the front seat and must remain at home between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. unless accompanied by his guarantor. The evidence heard at the bail hearing is subject to a publication ban.
The case will return to court in August.
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