Canadian Woman Who Drove Drunk, Blew Up Houses, Says Concert Venue Is Partially To Blame
Did you ever get so hammered that you inadvertently blew up more than $10 million worth of property?
No? Well, a Canadian woman has, but she says it's not all her fault.
Daniella Leis, a 26-year-old from Waterloo, Ontario drunkenly drove home from a Marilyn Manson concert at London Ontario's Budweiser Gardens in 2019. While attempting to pilot a Ford Fusion registered to her old man, Ms. Leis took a detour into a brick house, rupturing a gas line.
What followed was a pyrotechnic display on par with whatever Marilyn Manson had as part of his show, and in all likelihood even bigger. The explosion destroyed four houses and injured seven people.
A nearby house caught the explosion on a Ring camera.
Just a bad scene.
Leia wound up pleading guilty in 2020 to four counts of impaired driving causing bodily harm. In 2021, courts dealt Leia a three-year prison sentence.
Now, Leia and her father are dealing with a deluge of civil suits filed by victims of the incident holding them responsible for damages. In fact, they're juggling six separate lawsuits, per the CBC.
Hold the phone, they say. The father-daughter Leia duo insist that the food and beverage company that handles things at Budweiser Garden is at fault.
They over-served her, dammit!
Woman Who Blew Up Several Houses Is Trying To Blame The Concert Venue
Leia is now suing Ovations Ontario Food Services, the company that handles concessions at Budweiser Gardens. Leia and her pops insist that the company and its employees kept serving her, even "when they knew or ought to have known that she was intoxicated or would become intoxicated."
They also claim that the concert venue didn't have enough bouncers at the exits to act as goaltenders for potential drunk drivers.
They argue that staff members never checked her "intended mode of transportation" considering she appeared to be heavily intoxicated.
Finally, they insist that the venue's staff ejected her without making sure she wouldn't drive herself home.
The Leias want to hold Ovations responsible for “any awards or judgment amounts” that come from the civil cases.
According to the New York Post, of the seven injured in the 2019 incident, two were police officers and another two were firefighters. One firefighter even spent a week in the hospital recovering from injuries.
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