KSHB 41 reporter Megan Abundis covers Kansas City, Missouri, including neighborhoods in the southern part of the city. Share your story idea with Megan.
In Missouri, 200 people are killed a year by impaired drivers.
A state representative calls drunk driving laws "loose" in Missouri.
He and a mother whose son was killed by a drunk driver are trying to toughen them up.
“You don’t get over it,” said Deborah Weinstein.
Weinstein shared photos of her son David’s crash scene when he was killed in 2011.
She made clear why she shared those photos.
“I wanna scare them straight,” she said.
She said her son David was killed by a drunk driver who had a prior DUI.
“It’s shocking, it’s just shocking,” she said. “Drunk drivers aren’t out after parties after holidays, this was a Wednesday afternoon at 3 o’clock.”
Weinstein said David had a 9-year-old daughter, Breonna.
“He was just an easygoing guy, he was truly in a very happy time when he died,” she said. “When he was killed it was two days after Mother’s Day and two days before his 30th birthday. On Mother’s Day, he told my mom that he was going to ask the love of his life to marry him. He was truly at a happy time when he died.”
She said David was leaving his half-brother's house, after feeding his dogs, to then go visit his girlfriend when a drunk driver approached him from behind, clipping his back driver's side wheel.
“She pushed him totally off the road, both of them off the road and they just tumbled, tumbled, tumbled,” she said.
District 37’s Missouri Rep. Mark Sharp (D - Jackson County) is trying to improve the state's roads—by toughening drunk driving penalties with a House bill.
“Missouri has some of the loosest DUI laws and ignition interlock laws in the entire country,” Sharp said. “This is one of those bills that I know for sure will save lives.”
It centers around ignition locks like ‘Intoxalocks.’
Currently, in Missouri, people are arrested two to three times for drunk driving before they’re required to have a steering wheel lock to start their car.
Instead, this bill would do it the first time, but only for people who are really intoxicated and well over the legal limit of 0.08 BAC (blood alcohol level).
So, anyone arrested over 0.15 BAC would be required to have an ignition lock on the very first conviction.
“It’s really trying to go after the folks that are really inebriated behind the wheel,” Sharp said.
Like preventing the driver who killed Weinstein’s son, David.
Weinstein said after the driver pleaded guilty and was sentenced to prison for eight years, she was later released and Weinstein said she did it again.
“She did re-offend and is in prison at this time,” she said. “Why get in a car? I don’t get that.”
For the last 12 years, Weinstein has been a part of Mothers Against Drunk Driving and often speaks at Victim Impact Panels sharing her story.
Together, Deborah and Mark are thinking of the 200 people killed each year.
“Each state that has enacted these laws has seen at least a 7% drop,” Sharp said. “Personally, I had a high school friend that was killed due to an impaired driver.”
In Missouri, seeing a 7% drop could equate to 14 people a year kept safe and alive.
“We’re going after folks that are really wasted, those are the folks we should be okay with being a little tougher on,” Sharp said.
They’ll work to name the bill after David.
“I just always want people to remember him,” she said.
Sharp said 19 other states have all-offender DUI laws. This will be Sharp’s fifth year trying to pass this bill.
“The whole point of this bill is to get people to not want to be impaired behind the wheel,” he said.
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