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Two eighteen year-olds, Alexander Ryazanov and Wang-Pieao Ross, are being charged with criminal negligence causing death after a crash that killed a taxi driver while the men were street racing in Toronto.
The two men were racing Mercedes through a wealthy neighborhood on Tuesday night at speeds around 140 kilometers per hour (about 87 miles per hour) in a 50 kilometer per hour (about 30 miles per hour) zone. The taxi was hit while making a left turn. The force of the crash caused the taxi to wrap around a utility pole.
The driver of the taxi, forty-seven year-old Tahir Khan, was killed in the crash. Khan had immigrated to Canada six years earlier with his wife and two children from Pakistan.
“He was working to…reunite his family in Canada, and lived the Canadian dream,” Jim Bell, the General Manager of Diamond Taxicab Association. “Tahir’s dream for him and his family has been ended.”
Ryazanov, the driver of the Mercedes involved in the crash only received a few scratches. Ross fled the scene is being charged with failing to stop after an accident causing death.
A copy of Need for Speed discovered in the front seat of one of the suspect’s vehicles has caused many to blame video games for the incident.
“Here we have, in real life, two guys driving high-end cars at a high rate of speed in an urban area,” Detective Paul Lobsinger of the Toronto Police Department stated. “I don’t think it’s a giant leap for people to say, ‘Wow, how does this go together?’”
Lobsinger does admit that the video game is not solely to blame. “Look, in the proper perspective…if everyone imitated a video game such as that, we’d have to ban cars.”
Bail hearings for both men are scheduled for Friday and next Monday.