Vigil supports survivors, seeks end to impaired driving
People who lost loved ones in driving under the influence traffic accidents attended a vigil held by Mothers Against Drunk Driving on Friday in Butler to support each other and call on everybody to not drive while impaired.
Natalie Parkinson of Center Township told the dozen people who gathered at Diamond Park that people's lives change when they lose a family member in a DUI crash.
“Our lives are now defined as before the crash and after the crash. Our new normal is an unwelcome and challenging journey,” said Parkinson, whose 26-year-old daughter, Renee, a teacher in the Highlands School District in Allegheny County, was killed by a drunken driver while she drove home from a fireworks display on July 4, 2007.
Robin Weitz, a MADD victim services specialist from Pittsburgh who organized the vigil, said the organization wants people to decide to not drive after drinking — MADD does not advocate for a legislative ban on alcoholic beverages.
“We're not about prohibition. We're about making good decisions,” Weitz said.
Parkinson, who said “grief twists the soul,” echoed that principle.
“Please choose to save a life. Have your fun, but not at the expense of other lives,” she said.The driver who struck her daughter's car on Interstate 79 did so after leaving a bar where he'd consumed a drink poured in a fishbowl that contained the equivalent of 20 shots of alcohol, she said.Parkinson now speaks to DUI offenders at impact panel sessions who are ordered to attend by courts to qualify for Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition. She helped lobby the state Legislature to make a third DUI offense a felony.Brother and sister Jesse and Kristina Wenck of Butler attended to remember their younger sister, 15-year-old Alexis, who died in a DUI accident seven years ago.“We were planning her sweet 16,” Kristina, 24, said.She said she was with her sister before she got into a car with a drunken driver who crashed.“It haunts me every day. I have that survivor's guilt,” Kristina said. “It's not easy. I went through it when I was young.”She said she had a drink when she turned 21, but has had only a few since then. “It's not worth it. I'd rather stay home and be with my kids,” she said.
Guest speaker Mark Restori, an Allegheny County police homicide detective, said a DUI victim's family is left to suffer for the rest of their lives while the driver faces a “lenient” mandatory jail sentence of three to six years for a first offense.A person convicted of a fatal DUI accident who was previously convicted of the same crime faces a five to 10 year jail sentence, Restori said.People are killed by impaired drivers who don't recognize the consequences, he said.“They are taken away from this world by someone who thinks what they're doing doesn't have any impact,” Restori said.MADD is holding a “Walk like MADD” walk and run on Sept. 7 in North Park to raise money to assist victims. Register at walklikemadd.org.
Thirty people a day, or one person every 48 minutes, die as a result of drunken driving crashes in the United States, according to Mothers Against Drunk Driving.In Pennsylvania, 327 people were killed in DUI accidents in 2016, and 28 percent of DUI accidents resulted in fatalities.As of August 2016, 5,650 ignition interlocks were installed on the vehicles of DUI offenders and people who refused to take blood tests to measure the amount of alcohol in their blood.About one third of all drivers in the country arrested or convicted of DUI are repeat offenders.About 4,000 drivers are killed annually with drugs in their systems.The number of drunken driving deaths has been cut in half since MADD was founded in 1980.
