Thread: Family, friends gather to remember man killed by drunken dri

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Family, friends gather to remember man killed by drunken driver

July 17, 2006, 01:30 PM


BRUNSWICK COUNTY -- In life, he was a school teacher, a husband and a father of two. Sunday family and friends gathered to remember Scott Gardner one year after a drunken driver killed the Mount Holly man along a stretch of road in Ash.

It was an accident loved ones say that never should have happened. It was a tearful remembrance Sunday of a husband, father, teacher and friend: Scott Gardner. More than just a memorial it was also a tribute to those first on the scene the night he died.

The site of the accident is now strangely calm, a stark contrast to the day almost exactly a year ago, when Gardner was driving with his wife and two children down the highway. They were on their way to the beach for a vacation.

Twenty-six-year-old Ramiro Gallegos -- drunk and behind the wheel -- crashed into the family's car. Gallegos is an illegal immigrant with a long history of DWI convictions.

Last February he pleaded guilty to four charges including murder and was sentenced to at least 14 years in prison.

Scott's mother now has a mission: supporting a bill proposed by Congresswoman Sue Myrick, the Scott Gardner Act.

If made into law, it would make mandatory the detention and deportation of any illegal alien convicted of a DWI.

Gardner's mother said, "If the act can spare another family from the kind of loss that we have suffered, then it is quite an honor."

District Attorney Rex Gore said Ramiro Gallegos had four previous DWIs: one in Michigan, one in South Carolina, one in Duplin County and one in Brunswick County.

Gore said his office never knew about the two out-of state cases because there is no shared national DWI database.

Gore said with four DWIs there is a good chance Gallegos should have been behind bars the night Scott Gardner was killed, and that Gallegos had in fact been deported more than once, only to return to the US each time.

Scott Gardner's wife Tina remains in a coma.

BTTT

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