First of all, I want to extend my sympathies and prayers to all who have lost a loved one to this terrible crime that is mostly ignored by the law.
Next, thank you to the person who started this site.
My son, Keith, would have been 24 years old on April 20, 2004. 24 days before that, he and friends went out to a bar to play pool and meet friends.
My son was 140 lbs soaking wet and his two friends were way over 200 lbs. The bar maid kept giving my son many drinks free, because she had a crush on him and he was interested in her. His friends drank as much as he, but were not quite as intoxicated.
According to witnesses, they were all obviously very drunk when they left, and the barmaid, or anyone else, did not stop them.
My son sat in the front passenger seat of the Jeep, his other friend, who was not driving, sat in the back. No one had on seat belts.
The driver, at one point, was going over 100 mph and the friend in the back was scared and telling him to slow down. He tried to pass a car in front of him and his car went up on the two left wheels, and was heading towards the left bank of the road.
The car hit a telephone pole at the spot where my son was sitting in the Jeep. The pole was sheered in half. He died immediately being crushed into the driver's side. The driver was thrown from the car as the car flipped five times (the car that they passed were witnesses to this).
The car was so crushed when they got to it, that they thought my son was driving as he was crushed into the driver's side and from the car flipping, his head was badly misshapen.
The driver, when he woke in the hospital, tried to say that he was not driving but my son was. Even at the first hearing to determine if he would be tried, he lied. He was supposed to be my son's friend and he lied to save his ass.
Unfortunately, due to getting a judge who is too lenient in these cases, the DA said if he did not ask for a plea bargain, he would probably spend no time in jail, so we said yes, with a stipulation on his probation after. He was supposed to go to high schools with me and talk. His two years are almost up and he has yet to contact me about it so I called the DA and I am going to press the issue.
As far as the bar, we sued and won, if you can call it winning. The day AFTER the accident, when he died, the owners put the bar up for sale (can you say "guilty'?). We did not sue the barmaid, but would have if it would have helped but her testimony was important to winning.
We won and were able to pay off our house, go on a nice vacation, help my daughter out when she became pregnant and the father took off, but there is no amount of money that will ever take away the pain and the loss that we suffer.
Keith was my oldest of two and close to his sister, my only other child. She misses him so much and wishes that he could be there to see her daughter grow up. He loved children so much.
My husband retired the year he died because he just could not bring himself to work in his high-stress job any longer. I lost the joy in my job, too, and retired after 3 years of his death. Life is never the same.
Thanks for letting me share my story. Maybe someone will read this and think twice.
My son Keith.
