Played around with it a little, made it more straightforward. Will add more once I get an email back from Jayne with the info about how much she and the other mothers were able to do. Comments and feedback would be AWESOME!
December 12, 2007.
My phone rang at 10:00 am the morning I found out. My dad was calling, which struck me as odd since he should have been at work.
“Good morning.” I greeted him sleepily.
“Shawn passed away last night. He was in a car accident.” Dad always cut straight to the chase, “We haven’t told Jarrod yet. You should come home after your finals today.”
My skin prickled, emotions threatening to explode through every pore. I went temporarily blind as my mouth flapped open and shut like a fish drowning in too much oxygen
“Are you going to be ok?” Dad asked.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“I’ll see you this evening.” Dad knows me best; he knew I needed time to process that blow.
Gone? How could he be gone?
I closed my eyes and saw two five year olds slinging mud at each other on a construction site. I remembered running through the orange soupy ground to meet up with my little brother and his friend, grinning as I took a flying leap into a hole dug for the basement of a house.
December 7, 2003. Sherful, Shawn’s father, suffered an aneurism while Jarrod and Shawn were playing in the living room of their home. The boys called my dad for help, but he did not get there in time to save Shawn’s dad.
I heard Shawn and Jarrod’s devious laughter as they played pranks on each other and members of my family.
Shawn’s laughing face is in almost every major memory from my childhood.
Gone?
When Shawn was 14, his mom moved to
Winter break was starting early in
Gone?
He had gone to a party, one last hurrah before flying to
Gone.
Paramedics told Jane that Shawn was killed on impact; his BAC (blood alcohol content) was so high he probably never even woke up.
Gone.
In that same accident, Chad also killed his best friend and his little brother’s wrestling team mate. His BAC was two and a half times the Michigan legal limit that night, a stunning 0.2 (Lupo). In addition to the massive amount of alcohol 19-year-old Chad consumed that night, he also smoked pot. This coupled with the alcohol made him even more incapable of operating a vehicle. Why did their friends let them leave the party? Why didn’t anyone try to stop them? I had so many questions, but the answers didn’t really matter because none of them would bring Shawn back.
Chad received a 15 year prison sentence, due to the deaths he caused. He is eligible for release after seven years if he maintains good behavior. He is required to go to intensive therapy to cope with the guilt and depression he feels. When Chad gets out, he will not have a home to return to since his mother is too sick with cancer to handle him and Jane refuses to let him back into her house. In court, he said that every time he closes his eyes he sees their faces. He doesn’t know why he survived when they died, but he does know he’ll never be able to live down the decision he made that night.
The 7-11 that sold the underage boys beer temporarily lost their alcohol license, but they got it back after a short probationary period.
This story is not a unique case in Michigan. The year Shawn and his friends lost their lives, 736 other DUI-related deaths occurred on Michigan’s highways. This outrageous number can be compared to Virginia’s 332, taken the same year. The last two weeks of August 2007 alone, there were 18,000 alcohol-related arrests on the highways of Michigan.
Clearly, the laws and consequences regarding driving under the influence in Michigan are not harsh enough to discourage people from making that potentially fatal decision.
For someone caught on their first DUI offense in Michigan, the penalties include losing your license for up to six months, but you are eligible for a restricted license after only 30 days. Jail time is possible, but not mandatory. The guilty driver may have to pay a fine from $100-$500.
In comparison, Virginia takes every convicted drunk driver’s license for one year. There is a minimum fine of $250, but if there is a passenger under 18, the fine can be $500-$1,000 more expensive. There is a minimum five-day jail sentence, which goes to ten days if the driver’s BAC is above 0.2. An Ignition Interlock device is required for those convicted with a BAC over .15 and attendance at an Alcohol Safety Action Program for a number of weeks.
The state of Georgia has a population nearly equal to Michigan’s, and their DUI fatality in 2007 was only 441. When a resident of Georgia is arrested for their first DUI, they must serve from ten days to one year in jail, lose their license for up to one year, and serve a minimum of 40 hours of community service. A first offense DUI charge will cost them between $300-$1,000. In order to get their license back, the offender must pay a $210 re-instatement fee.
None of the monetary amounts include court costs, lawyer fees, missed work time, or the cost for alternative transportation. They are solely the fine attached to the charge.
As the offenses repeat, the penalties become more severe. When written next to each other, the differences between the penalties are astounding. Michigan’s relaxed penalties become more obvious, and erase any doubt as to why their death toll is so much higher than other states’.
After the accident that stole their children, the mothers of Shawn and his friends lobbied the Michigan government to impose stricter penalties on those convicted of driving under the influence or drugs or alcohol. They hoped that stricter penalties would discourage so many people from committing such a dangerous mistake.
I still would like to see the introduction of the statistics be a be a little more subtle and "sticky". For instance instead of writing:
ReplyDelete"The year Shawn and his friends lost their lives, 736 other DUI-related deaths occurred on Michigan’s highways. This outrageous number can be compared to Virginia’s 332, taken the same year. The last two weeks of August 2007 alone, there were 18,000 alcohol-related arrests on the highways of Michigan."
you could write something like, "Shawn wasn't the only one to die that year from drinking and driving, enough people to fill twenty school buses also left us that year in similar ways in Michigan. Forty 747s full received drinking related tickets."
I just feel like people connect more with things that produce mental images over numbers.
Before I beat you up too much though I thought everything up too this point was really, really strong. Very emotional, which is a good thing coming from me because I usually shut-off mentally on stories that get too gushy but this is some real deep stuff that kept me reading. It flowed well and the "gones" are more in order this time around.
But, it still kind of feels like an after school special or a dare sermon to me after the part with the drinking stats, until it comes back to it's true feeling in the final paragraph. All of the statistics just seem like something you would talk about with close friends and family or what you would hear in class. I understand you are trying to send a message but I still think you would do it better driving the emotional stake home, the way you were on the first half of the story. Or maybe make vaguer statements and provide elaborated footnotes. All the stats just throw me off from what is a very moving story.
I really like the story overall and especially the first half. thanks - brandt