A 22-year-old woman from the Lennox Island First Nation has been sentenced to just over four years in federal custody for an impaired driving incident that killed her two passengers.

Karissa-Jo Mary Elizabeth Bernard, 22, and Kevin Joseph Labobe, 54, were both pronounced dead at the scene of the single-vehicle crash, which was on the sole road leading to the small, tightly knit Mi’kmaw community in June of last year. 

Chief Judge Krista MacKay accepted the Crown and legal aid’s joint recommendation of 52 months in custody for the driver, Angelina Bernard, as well as a 10-year driving ban. 

The proposal was presented to the judge during a sentencing hearing last week, but MacKay said she wanted to take some time to consider what was said and speak to all elements of the case, which she did in Summerside on Tuesday. 

”The facts here are unfortunately all too common of an occurrence here on P.E.I.,” MacKay told the packed courtroom.

”No one should have been driving that vehicle, least of all the accused, who was the most visibly impaired and was already awaiting a sentence.”

Angelina Bernard’s case was supposed to go to trial last month, but instead the first scheduled day started with the driver changing some of her pleas to guilty.

The court reviewed video footage of the three coming and going from a bar — and then watched the group drive away with Angelina Bernard in the drivers’ seat.

She has a record of impaired driving from a prior incident in 2023 and another in February 2025. She had not yet been sentenced for the latter when the fatal single vehicle crash happened in East Bideford in June 2025.

Speaking from the bench for 20 minutes, MacKay called it an “unnecessary tragedy.” She said Angelina Bernard carries moral blameworthiness — despite her own personal trauma and “severe” addiction issues — because drinking and driving was a choice.

”It is clear the families here are struggling and will continue to struggle with the senseless loss,” MacKay said. “The situation is not an accident.… The consequences will last forever.”

Bernard has been in custody since she was arrested in August and was given credit for that time. 336 days were taken off her sentence, which is credit of 1.5 days for the 224 she’s been in the provincial jail.

‘No winners’

Bernard appeared in person for the judge’s decision. She sat with her lawyer, looking mostly downward, and then signed some paperwork and was led out of the courtroom in silence while the 40 people in the pews looked on.

“We are very empathetic towards Angie. I also grew up with her as a neighbor. She was my sister’s best friend,” Alyssa Jo Bernard, sister of Karissa-Jo Bernard, told CBC News after the sentence was handed down. 

“I don’t hold any hatred towards her. It’s actually very sad that she has to go through her grieving journey in this way.”

Alyssa Jo said the entire Lennox Island community has been impacted by the deaths, but she hoped her community’s journey towards healing can now begin. 

“I just hope that this story doesn’t end, and that they didn’t pass away for anything, and that somebody, somewhere will hopefully put the keys down. Not put another family through what we had to go through,” she said.

“We all knew Karissa. We all knew Kevin. We all know Angie. So it’s definitely going to be an adjustment. But I hope today brought justice to some families like it did to ours.” 

Kevin Labobe’s stepdaughter Misti Myers said no sentence could ever measure the weight of what was lost, and many people’s lives have been changed forever.

“When something like this happens, there are no winners. There is no side that walks away whole. There is only loss, spreading further than most people will ever truly understand,” Myers wrote in a message.

“Today may bring some sense of accountability, maybe even a small step toward closure for some — but it doesn’t heal the wounds. It doesn’t bring back the people we love.”