A man who admitted to running over and beating a Toronto man to death was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison for manslaughter Monday, hours after giving the victim’s family a tearful apology.

Christopher Skinner was killed in October 2009 in the city’s downtown core. Police searched for the suspect in the case for nearly four years, issuing several public appeals for witnesses to come forward.

Agustin Alexander Caruso, 25, told a Toronto court Monday he thought about turning himself in to police several times.

"For many years, I thought about coming forward about this night. For many years, I denied the relief and understanding for the Skinner family," he said.

"With this plea, I do take full responsibility for my actions and conduct on the night in question in which I caused the death of a young man who did absolutely nothing wrong," he told Skinner's family. "I am so sorry."

Caruso was initially charged with second-degree murder in 2013 in connection with Skinner's death but pleaded guilty to the lesser charge on Monday morning.

According to an agreed statement of facts, Skinner had been out celebrating his sister’s birthday on Oct. 18, 2009 and was trying to hail a cab near Adelaide and Victoria streets at around 3 a.m. when he approached Caruso's vehicle.

Skinner, who was reportedly intoxicated, appeared at the window of the SUV while it was stopped at a light and asked for a ride. When he was denied, 27-year-old Skinner banged on the passenger side window with his fist, which prompted occupants of the vehicle to get out of the car.

According to Crown prosecutor Ann Morgan, the group, who had been drinking and doing drugs earlier on in the night, began repeatedly punching and kicking Skinner, who did not fight back and fell to the ground.

Once Caruso and his friends got back in the vehicle, Caruso ran Skinner over with the front and back tires of the SUV.

He was subsequently pronounced dead in hospital.

Those close to Skinner appeared in court Monday to deliver tearful victim impact statements about the grief they have experienced since he was killed.

"What kind of family man would he have been? What kind of uncle would he have been to his unborn nephew? What kind of son would he be towards me in my old age?" Skinner's mother Ellen said. "I will never know. I will never feel his love towards me again."

Skinner's sister Taryn described her brother as someone who would "do anything for his younger sister to protect her and make her happy."

"Christopher was my best friend, someone who understood me without even hearing me speak," she added during her victim impact statement.

Speaking to reporters outside the courthouse Monday, Taryn Skinner said the guilty plea did not provide any closure for her family.

"The sentencing doesn’t change the way that we feel," she said.

"(Caruso's) family will have their son back eventually and they can go visit him next week and the week after but we don’t have that luxury."

She said facing the man who killed her brother wasn't as scary as she had expected it to be.

"I was glad that he showed the remorse he did. I was glad he would look us in the eye," she noted.

Det.-Sgt. Stacy Gallant, one of the homicide detectives who investigated Skinner's death, dismissed Caruso's assertion that he had considered coming forward.

"There was no indication that he made any attempts to come forward before," he said.

Gallant said that it was in fact contact cards, collected as part of the controversial practice of police 'carding,' that broke the case wide open after someone from British Columbia came forward with information.

"When you are only working with limited information... and it is in the form of nicknames or partial names or you know half information, sometimes utilizing the contact cards and the information that we have in those databases is able to allow us to make connections... It led to the identity of the people involved and that furthered the investigation," he said.

Eventually police obtained search warrants, phone and banking records and even received authorization for a wiretap investigation.

Two other men charged in connection with the case will go to trial on aggravated assault charges in March, Gallant said. The trial for another suspect accused of obstruction of justice will begin in November.

Three other people who were inside the car at the time of the deadly assault are not facing any charges.

“There is no charge for being immoral or not doing the right thing," Gallant added.

-With files from CTV Toronto's Tamara Cherry