One bad decision, a lifetime of regrets

POST FALLS - Post Falls High seniors thinking about letting loose over Memorial Day or graduation received a dose of visual reminders on Monday about the dangers of impaired driving.

Police showed photos of several mangled vehicles that resulted from local DUI accidents and listed the names of the fatalities.

A 25-year-old man shared what he has to live with after a crash with him behind the wheel killed a female friend of his.

And one student who volunteered to slip on impaired vision goggles looked silly in front of classmates when an officer asked him to toss a football and walk straight.

Student Danny Slater said it wasn't just another assembly on drinking and driving.

"The thing that jumped out to me was that guy (involved in the crash) had to look his friend's father in the eye," Slater said. "That would be a scary moment."

The man and assembly organizers declined to release his full name. He manages a local, family-owned business - organizers said some of his employees don't even know about the incident - and he's on probation after pleading guilty to vehicular manslaughter and spending a year in jail.

The accident was in Boise in January 2007.

"Molly is the first thing I think of every morning and I stay awake a lot of nights thinking about her," he told the students. "Her son will never have his mother again. By the grace of God (her father) forgave me."

The man said many freedoms have been taken away as a result of his decision to drive drunk. He's not permitted to drive, can't leave the country and can't own a gun.

"My liberties are very restricted as a felon, but that's not the worst part," he said. "This isn't a situation that I can make right."

Charlie Greear of Idaho State Police said most people become impaired after only a half to one can of beer. But all drugs, not just alcohol, effects a person's ability to drive and make decisions.

"A DUI is something you don't get rid of (on your record)," Greear said. "And you don't have to be driving to end up dead."

Greear didn't hold much back when describing and showing fatal or serious accidents he's arrived at.

He told about a boy whose younger brother was draped across his lap and died during an accident.

"The boy's last words were, 'Mommy, he's not stopping,'" Greear said of the oncoming vehicle driven by an impaired driver who failed to stop at a red light.

Bill Keeley of Kootenai County Fire and Rescue told of an accident in which a boy witnessed his girlfriend being in a crash over an embankment, but he decided to keep driving to a party rather than report it.

"If somebody else hadn't seen the skidmarks and come across the accident, she would have died there," he said.

Slater said the assembly was worth his time.

"I've never really thought about it much, but I'll never get in a car with a drunk driver," he said.