What a terrible, terrible tragedy for these poor parents, the siblings, and all their friends. There’s nothing a person can do to protect from a drunk driver except perhaps not be on the road late at night.
^^^And a tragedy for the students themselves, and down the line, the patients who could have benefited from their intelligence and compassion.
All that potential, all that knowledge, all those nights studying OChem, the planning, volunteering, high grades, all that’s necessary to get into medical school, then two years of medical school…all that wiped out in one second by one completely irresponsible criminal. The responsible always have to watch out not to be victims of the irresponsible.
I hope he gets a life sentence, but my guess is that he’ll get a much lighter sentence. Killing with a car, or in this case, truck, is somehow seen as a lesser crime than killing with a knife or a gun.
Just awful. I have a friend whose sister and husband were hit by a drunk driver who crossed the center line, also in San Diego, last November. The woman is just walking again, with great difficulty and in pain, although she is cheerful about it. The drunk driver was not jailed and I’m not sure what she was charged with. She is 70 years old and has hired a bankruptcy lawyer to try to hide assets. Horrible.
Awful, just awful. My sympathies to these families.
Not just every parent’s nightmare.
I almost lost my dad to a drunk driver and, in many ways, I did actually lose him.
Not only do I think he should get life in prison but I firmly believe that every drunk driver should be charged with attempted murder and given lengthy sentences.
No excuse. No different than firing a gun into a crowd.
What a waste of human flesh. My heart goes out to these families.
Perfectly avoidable. Every drunk driver should be charged with a crime and jailed even if they don’t kill someone. It’s a tragedy waiting to happen. Most people drive while intoxicated on more than one occasion before they are caught. Send a message.
terrible! awful! prayers for those affected.
i wish cars had breathalyzers on them so that they wouldn’t start if intoxicated.
I know that the concern is that others would “breathe in” for the drunk driver, but I think that wouldn’t happen nearly as often as drunk drivers actually drive.
I encountered a “wrong way driver” about a week ago. Scary, late at night. I think the driver was confused, not drunk…it was a one way street and an easy mistake to make.
Family friends lost their 18 yo, just-graduated D to a drunk driver last June. She was coming home from a day at the lake with her friends (and was sober and not on her cell). The driver ran a stop sign and crossed five lanes of traffic, hitting her and a friend at 74 mph. Said driver had six prior DUIs. In their state, if a repeat offender goes five years without a DUI, he/she is then treated as a first time offender if it happens again. Outrage does not begin to describe how I feel about that individual and the laws in their state.
CD, that made my blood boil and heart break… and I obviously don’t know the young lady and her family. I’m so, so sorry for yours and their loss.
So, so terribly tragic and sad. The drunk driver was an active duty Marine at nearby Miramar.
It’s crazy how lenient we are in this country towards drunk driving. It’s like we value the driving privileges of drunk drivers more than the lives of the people they kill.
As a Maryland resident, I completely agree. We have some of the most lenient drunk driving laws in the nation. Why? Because a powerful state legislator - who is also a defense attorney in many drunk driving cases - wants it that way. Talk about a conflict of interest.
I would love to see mandatory jail time for drunk driving fatalities nationwide.
The fact that this statement even needs to be said… that there is a possibility of NOT getting jail time after taking a life… makes me sick.
Texting is another problem. On the freeway, we see lots of people text and drive. They look down and leave a big gap on the fast lane. I hate to see people killed because of this stupidity.
I was at my community garden a few hours ago and heard an accident nearby. Someone was speeding the wrong way down a one way street and blew through an intersection with a major, 4-lane road. They must have thought, “no stop sign so I have the right of way”. How idiotic! I don’t know if the driver was drunk or not. He hit two other cars. I was a block away and felt like my teeth were jarred.
@rockvillemom - it is sad that there is so much of that garbage in politics. Del. Sheila Hixson is the chair of the ways and means committee. Back before gambling in MD, there was a bill that would force candidates for office in the state to disclose how much money they got from gambling interests. As chair, she just put that bill in her desk drawer and let it die. She has deep ties to gambling money. These committee chairs should be rotated periodically so this kind of abuse of power doesn’t continue.
If we lost one of our precious children to someone with that history, I seriously fear my DH might lose it and go after that guy. It’s one thing to make a mistake. It’s quite another to repeat a dangerous, selfish, reckless, illegal act over and over and over again.
Breathalyzers required in the cars of everyone, and one strike your out for a driver license. Those would be life saving.
It’s interesting how in some states the maximum sentence is really low…Oklahoma: 0 to 1 year.?
http://www.madd.org/laws/law-overview/Vehicular_Homicide_Overview.pdf