On the night of August 8th, 1996, after finishing her shift at work, Donette was on her way home. A 29 year old female, left the "beer garden" at the county fair, around 11 PM. This girl had been there most of the night drinking. She managed to avoid the police and find her way through town in her Mercedes. Just outside of the city limits of town, she crossed the center line and sideswiped a Jeep, the full length, proceed on across the line and hit my daughter’s ‘95 Neon, near head-on. My daughter’s car was spun around and flipped on the drivers side and slid down and embankment, and came to a rest. A 3rd car drove through the point of impact and was untouched. The 4th car was hit by the debris from my daughter’s car, but no injuries there.
My daughter had tried to move to the shoulder, but the other car continued on to impact. Donette had her seat belt on, and the air bags did deploy, but because of where the impact was the steering wheel went between the front seats so fast that the bag was of no use. Donette’s head struck the A post on her car, and then the pavement when it turned on it’s side. They said she died instantly of massive head injuries, and never felt any pain. I still wonder and have nightmare about this.
Our daughter laid in her car, dead, while they attended to the drunk. Her dad was on his way home from work, an hour later, on the same road, and was detoured around the crash onto another road, not knowing it was Donette. He hadn’t been home very long when we got the horrible knock on the door that forever rings in my head. The shock, the screaming, the pain when your heart has been torn to shreds. Trying to make sense of it all, trying to find out where she is and that you can’t go to her immediately, because she has been taken to a strange, cold morgue.
The next hardest thing I’ve had to do outside of burying my Daughter was to read the medical reports. How do you continue on knowing that her life drained from her ears, and that every major organ in her body was dislodged. The beautiful child, a gift from God, that you created, taken from you in a flash by an irresponsible drunk person, who made the choice to drink and then get in a car and drive. There is no excuse good enough that will ever satisfy us that this was an accident. It was no accident that this person, took that first drink and "chose" to "allow" herself to get in the drunken state, with a BAC of .18.
This drunken persons injuries have healed, ours never will. Pain is our constant companion!

--Written by Donette’s mother,
along with Donette's favorite song,
"On Eagle's Wings"