A Western University student who was killed by a drunk driver is being honoured in a video made by her fellow students.
Samuel Ghitis and Shay Gautman are two residence advisors at Medway-Sydenham Hall and decided to make the video in honour of Andrea Christidis and to spread awareness about the dangers of impaired driving.
Christidis lived on the same floor as Ghitis. He says her death had a tremendous impact and inspired this initiative.
"After Andrea passed away it had such a big impact on our community and we decided, you know this should not happen anymore. This should not be something that anyone has to go through," Ghitis says. "Especially since drinking and driving can be so easily avoided by just calling a cab. So we decided that through the use of our video, we're just going to share it through everyone and try to get as many people to watch it, in order to get everyone to think about their actions."
Gautman says people need to speak up about impaired driving.
"I find that we notice that a lot of people know that it's not okay, but they are scared to speak up when they are in situations where they're experiencing someone who is going to drive when impaired," Gautman says. "So that's kind of where the idea came from."
When making the video, they walked throughout the residence and asked individuals if they would be comfortable in helping to raise awareness.
"A lot of people from the video are from Andrea's floor and we gave them first priority in terms of being in the video, because they were directly affected and they knew Andrea more than other people in the building," Gautman says.
So far they say they have had a lot of positive feedback and lots of shares, as the video portrays the message they were trying to get across.
Gautman feels the video may have acted as a sort of therapy for the people who live on Andrea's floor.
"I feel like it was sort of therapeutic. It really helped, making the video, being part of the video, and now sharing the video," Gautman says. "They feel as if they're doing something and being a step towards change, and doing something positive about what happened to Andrea."
Christidis died three days after she was hit by a car that jumped the curb on Lambton Dr. the night of October 7, 2015. She was walking back to her residence when she was hit.
Jared Dejong, 25, pleaded guilty to having over 80 mg of alcohol in 100 ml of blood causing death. A sentencing hearing will begin on April 28.
**This story was written by Kayley Leon, a student in the Media, Theory, and Production program at Western University. Kayley is currently performing an internship with BlackburnNews.com**