Victims Speak

DUI victims recount their tragedies at program

By BRIAN FERRY bferry@timesobserver.com
Marlene was at work when the policemen came to tell her that her daughter was dead.

Janice watched the crash that killed her mother, father and two nephews, both under 10.

Beverly lost a niece and sees the crushing impact that loss has had on her sister.

Vinnie doesn’t remember the crash that put him in three different hospitals before he woke up.

Four people spoke before an audience at Warren Public Library. Each had lost something vital — a loved one, time, life without pain — at the hands of drunk drivers.

Vinnie and Janice were among the founders of the Warren County Victim Impact Panel (VIP) some 14 years ago.

Marlene has been speaking at the panels for 10 years. Beverly is in her second year.

The 60 people in the audience had been sentenced for alcohol or drug related offenses, most for driving under the influence (DUI). Part of each sentence was to attend the VIP.

The panelists were there to make a difference, to save lives, to give someone the second chance they didn’t get.

“I choose to get involved so I can keep you from the same heartache,” Beverly said. “I want it to touch each and every one of you so that you never drink and get behind the wheel again.”

“No one starts out that day to kill someone,” she said.

Marlene said she was not speaking to “scold, chastise or point fingers.”

“I want to make a difference,” she said.

Jamie

“At about 7:15 a.m., two state troopers came up to me at work,” Marlene said. “As they stepped out the door, they took off their hats and told me there had been an accident and Jamie didn’t make it.”

“Every parent’s nightmare,” Beverly said. “They don’t sugar coat it. There is no way to soften that news: ‘Your daughter is dead.’”

When Jamie asked for camping gear on a rainy night, her mother asked why.

“Can’t I have fun with my friends?” Jamie asked.

She wanted her daughter to have fun, have friends, enjoy life. She didn’t ask any more questions.

“Well, fun and her friends killed her,” Marlene said.

It was July of 1997. Jamie had just graduated from high school.



Mom, Dad, Jarrod, Justin

“I watched as the vehicles impacted, went up into the air and crashed back to the ground,” Janice said.

As her brother and sister-in-law frantically tried to open the back door to get to their children, Janice went to the front of the vehicle.

She couldn’t find a pulse in her mother’s wrist.

“All I could do was hold her hand that was hanging out of the window and pray,” Janice said. “As I was talking to my mom, blood starting coming out of her mouth.”

A state trooper asked her to move away from the vehicle so paramedics could do their jobs.

“I said, ‘I love you,’ to my mom and dad for the last time,” Janice said. “Part of me died that week.”

Of her three nephews in the vehicle, Jarrod, 9, and Justin, 7, were killed. Their older brother, Josh, was 10. Both of his legs were broken, but he survived.

Janice often visited Josh at the hospital. “Sometimes we would just hold hands and cry,” Janice said.

Living through the loss of his brothers and grandparents cast a dark shadow on Josh’s life. “It has taken him many years to realize he deserves all the good things in life,” Janice said.

Shannon

In January 2003, Beverly’s sister went to Colorado in a panic, hoping the report of Shannon’s death was inaccurate.

She knew she would have to go to the morgue to make an identification of her only child.

But, she arrived on Sunday and there was no one in the office. She had to spend a hysterical night wondering.

When she made the identification on Monday, only half of Shannon’s face was recognizable.

An autopsy was performed as a routine matter. The toxicology was negative, but the report turned up something else.

“Shannon was newly pregnant,” Beverly said. “Nancy had to learn that through the autopsy report — ‘Your daughter is dead and so is a grandchild.’”

“Shannon was the most dear and sweet person to be around,” she said. “Now we have to cling to videos and pictures.”

Vinnie

Vinnie was on Dorcon Road headed east toward Clarendon.

When he awoke, “My eyes were closed and I heard somebody say, ‘Where are you?’” he said. “I said Clarendon.”

He had no idea he had been taken to Warren General, transferred to Saint Vincent Hospital in Erie and then to Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh in the 12 days he had been unconscious.

He asked a doctor how long it would be until he got out. He had a business to run and a wife and baby to be with and take care of.

“A week would have been nice,” he said.

The doctor told him six months.

He was told that his leg bone had been poking out through his jeans during the two hours that rescue teams worked to extricate him from his mangled car. A year later, the leg was not healing properly and the plate put in to help the healing process was replaced by a rod.

His neck was broken at the C2 vertebra, a usually fatal break known as the hangman’s fracture.

He described the halo he wore for five months. The device was screwed into his skull and when it had to be tightened, he could feel it. “It’s like your head is in a vise,” Vinnie said. He wore it for four months.

He couldn’t perform the most basic functions without help. “I had to call for help to do anything,” he said.

He went through depression and bitterness. “No doctor told me I’d never be able to walk again, but you do begin to wonder,” he said. “I cried when I took my first step.”

With the help of rehabilitation, Vinnie learned to walk again. His son had learned first.

He thought of rehab as another name for a nursing home, he said. “What a feeling to be committed to a home at the age of 37,” Vinnie said.

He had plans, visions of the future with his family. Some of those dreams will never come true because of the lasting damage.

“I don’t know how I can make it up to them,” he said.

The offenders

Each of the victims spoke a little about their offenders.

“The offender had been at a wedding reception,” Janice said. He refused to give up his keys.

“He and his wife escaped their deaths with bumps and bruises,” she said.

The driver was initially sentenced to 14 and a half to 28 years. The sentence was overturned. The final sentence was three and a half to seven years. He was out after one and a half. “He goes on with his life,” Janice said.

Four people, 9-year-old Jarrod and 7-year-old Justin, and Janice’s parents, 56-year-old Ellen and 59-year-old Bill, did not get a chance to go on with theirs.

Marlene remembers a short-lived feeling of satisfaction when her niece’s killer, who broadsided Shannon’s vehicle after running a red light at 80 miles per hour, then fled to Mexico for several months, was sentenced to 12 years.

That feeling was short-lived because “sobs from his mother could be heard in the courtroom.”

“Nobody really won,” she said. “He was only 23. Both families were ruined by this.”

“My offender had been drinking all day,” Vinnie said. “In November 1995, he was released after only two years.”

“My body will be in jail forever, with pain every day,” Vinnie said. “Forever is a long time.”

Marlene’s offender was someone she knew.

Jamie was riding in the bed of a pickup truck with three of those friends. Another friend was driving. He was drunk.

He served six months in state prison and another six in a boot camp. Jamie had just graduated high school, a full life should have been ahead of her.

Impact

Marlene had to make a decision about what to do with Jamie’s remains. She decided to have her daughter cremated. “I couldn’t stand the thought of putting my youngest child in the ground,” she said.

“Which one of your kids could you do without?” Marlene said. “Please don’t drink and drive.”

About four times a year, a group of victims addresses a list of offenders about the impact that drunk driving has had on their lives.

“What they share is painful for them, but we want to put flesh and blood to what we’ve talked about,” DUI Coordinator Carl McKee of Warren County adult probation said.

After the hour-long panel, several of those in the audience came up to the table and shook every hand, saying ‘thank you,’ on their way.

“You have had an impact on my life,” one man in green and white stripes said.

“Think about us the next time,” Janice said.

“Yes,” the prisoner said. “Yes, I will.”