Drunken drivers listen to victims

Emily Evans wants the man who hit her head-on with his car July 2 to know that he nearly left her two children orphans.

“He took my entire summer away from me with my kids,” said Evans, a 27-year-old single mother in Post Falls. “I couldn’t walk, cook for myself. It upsets me that someone could be that stupid to drink and get behind the wheel of a car.”

It’s unlikely the driver who hit Evans ever will hear from her how he changed her life. But he’ll most likely hear from other people injured or crippled by drunken drivers or people who lost loved ones in alcohol-related crashes. At the Kootenai County Substance Abuse Council’s invitation, victims convened Wednesday for the first time to tell their stories to an audience of drunken driving offenders.

The victims’ panel is an idea borrowed from Spokane, said Tammy Roberts, executive director of the council. The Greater Spokane County Substance Abuse Council started the panels in 1992 because offenders often don’t hear the consequences of their alcohol abuse, said Michael Kenny the Spokane council executive director.

“It’s probably the most worthwhile program I’ve seen,” said Kenny, who has 20 years as a public defender behind him. “People shuffled through the system never get to see what they’ve done to their victims.”

One of his most powerful speakers is a quadriplegic woman who was thrown from a car driven by a drunken driver on her graduation night.

“She says she hopes they never end up where she is,” Kenny said. “One burly man in the audience put on his sunglasses and folded his arms across his chest. I thought he wasn’t showing her respect so I told him to take off the glasses. He was crying.”

Spokane County requires offenders to attend the victims’ panels and pay for the experience. The council holds two per month and averages 150 offenders at each gathering, Kenny said.

Kootenai County has sent misdemeanor offenders on supervised probation to Spokane’s panel talks for several years, said Greg Orlando, probation administrator. He sent 10 offenders to the Kootenai County panel Wednesday.

“We need this. A vast majority of our caseload are DUI (driving under the influence) offenders,” he said. “I look at the victims’ panel as being one element of addressing the problem, but a significant one. Offenders need to be accountable to how their choices have affected other’s lives.”

Kootenai County’s misdemeanor probation program has 700 active cases, and most are drunken drivers, Orlando said.

The panel Roberts pulled together for Wednesday featured two people who lost children in drunken driving accidents. The third speaker was a man hit by a drunken driver. Offenders paid $30 to attend, listened for 90 minutes, then received a receipt to prove they attended.

Roberts said she’ll organize a panel every other month and include a special panel for juvenile offenders. The Kootenai Alliance for Children and Families reinforced the campaign against juvenile drinking by releasing a brochure this month with information for parents on the dangers of alcohol. A survey of Kootenai County students earlier this year showed 50 percent of the respondents had their first alcoholic drink in middle school. Twenty-five percent of older students responded that they drink and drive.

“Kids are drinking earlier than ever now, before 14,” said Callie Ketner, Alliance director. “We had a lot of youths who drink and drive. It has to stop.”

Evans was told by others on the scene the driver who plowed into her car on Seltice Way near Tidyman’s last month was drunk, but Idaho State Police won’t confirm it. The driver was flown to Harborview Medical Center for care. Charges are still pending, said ISP’s Lt. Curtis Exley.

Evans was heading east with a friend that night. Police told her the car that hit her was heading west at more than 90 mph. The impact broke bones in her face from her forehead to her jaw, broke six ribs, collapsed a lung, broke her foot in six places and lacerated her liver, kidney and spleen.

Her passenger, also a single mother, suffered a broken foot and nose, a cut eyelid and whiplash. Evans spent eight days at Kootenai Medical Center. Her children – Jonathan Bechard, 3, and Madison Bechard, 6 – lived with Evans’ parents for five weeks while their mother regained the ability to walk. Her car insurance covered medical costs but not a replacement car. Her 2001 Saturn was smashed. The driver who hit her had no insurance.

At some point, Evans may speak on a victims’ panel, she said. She would tell the driver who hit her that she has no way to get around with her children anymore, that her face hurts all the time and that she still faces another surgery on her nose.

“His arrogance,” she said, shaking her head angrily. “He could have killed two single moms.”