Alcohol, speed and deferred sentences

FATALITY ACCIDENTS

My mom and dad, Elmer and Joyce Kvinsland, were killed by a habitual drunk driver with multiple deferred sentences. As a heartbroken survivor, I am sickened to continue to hear the deaths of innocents by drunk drivers referred to as “accidents” or “a case of bad judgment.”

Beautiful Georgia Pemberton’s apparently died at the hands of a driver with a deferred sentence for drunk driving. Her poor mother still “believes justice will prevail.” How can any sentence likely measured in months be considered justice for the stolen promise of her girl? Accomplished engineer Kenneth Roodzant worked hard only to have his life snuffed out by a driver, alleged by prosecutors to have been drinking and angry with his girl friend. The driver reportedly never “intended to hurt anyone.”

Excuses, excuses, excuses. Alcohol, speed and deferred sentences kill. Do we need to make public the graphic autopsy reports which haunt the living survivors? Make sentences fit the physical carnage inflicted by 2,000 pounds of hurtling steel. It makes a gunshot or knife wound appear minor.

Stanwood