A tale of two accidents: Victims of alleged drunk drivers battle bad dreams, financial nightmares

By Mark Brumley -- Staff Writer, The Courier-Tribune
Posted: 07/02/06 - 12:39:35 am CDT




ASHEBORO — Tabitha Alley’s collision with an alleged drunk driver took place on Easter Sunday 2005.

Craig Whittington’s occurred a little more than a year later, and resulted in what he believes was a senseless death.

Both have largely recovered from the crippling injuries they suffered in the crashes, but they say it will probably take them much longer to climb out of the financial hole they were thrown into by drivers with no insurance. And they may never get back the peace of mind they had before they became victims.

The experiences have left both of them with the same question: Why?

They struggle to understand how two men with such poor driving records were able to get back behind the wheel of a car and put others’ lives at risk. And they wonder if the law will be able to stop the men and others like them from destroying the lives of more unsuspecting motorists whom they might run into on the highway. Literally.



As the N.C. Highway Patrol and other law enforcement agencies crack down on drunk drivers and speeders this holiday weekend, Whittington and Alley share their stories of how their lives were suddenly interrupted by alleged drunk drivers with no insurance.

Like most people, they didn’t think it could happen to them.

“It’s been a nightmare,” Alley said. “It really has.”

“Just about every night, I can see that car coming at me,” Whittington said.



Easter Sunday

In March 2005, several of Tabitha Alley’s dreams had come true.

She was still a newlywed, married just nine months. And she was enjoying her first year as a kindergarten teacher at New Market Elementary School. While working as a teaching assistant, she had gone to school at night at High Point University for three years to get a degree and a state license to become a full-fledged teacher.

Then, on March 27, 2005, she nearly lost all of that.

“We were hit head-on by a drunk driver,” Alley said.

Alley said the entire day is a blur to her now.

It was Easter Sunday, and earlier in the day she had had lunch at her grandmother’s house. That evening, she and her husband, Brian, 29, were driving west to Asheboro from their home in Franklinville to meet her younger brother and his girlfriend for supper at Pizza Hut.

They never made it.

With Brian Alley behind the wheel of their new 2005 Toyota Camry, they had just passed Luck Road when a 1996 Chevrolet headed east crossed the four-lane and slammed into their car at about 8:10 p.m. The passenger side, where Tabitha Alley was sitting, took the brunt of the crash.

Alley said she remembers very little about the wreck, just headlights coming at them, and the aftermath.

The impact bent the dash down on top of her legs and feet, pinning her in the vehicle. Both of her feet were crushed, her right femur bone was shattered, her right knee was cut open, her right hip was broken, a vertebrae was cracked and her right arm, elbow and wrist were broken. She nearly died. Doctors told her that her entire system briefly shut down, which she said later forced doctors to remove her gall bladder.

Next to her, her husband had suffered a severe concussion and was unable to help her. He said he can’t remember anything about the wreck.

Alley said she remembers screaming after the wreck. A woman who had stopped on the highway came to her aid. Somehow, she was able to give the woman her brother’s mobile telephone number, and the stranger called him. He, in turn, called their family, and they rushed to the scene.

After rescue workers freed Alley from the crunched-up Toyota, she was taken to Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, where she would spend the next two weeks. She underwent five surgeries, during which rods, pins, screws and plates were inserted in her feet, her leg, her arm and her hip to support her broken bones.

“They had to remove a lot of bone from my legs and arm because there were bone chips,” Alley said.

When she was discharged, she and her husband had to spend hundreds of dollars to set up a hospital room of their own in their home and buy her a wheelchair. They said none of those costs were covered by insurance. Alley was helpless. She required around-the-clock care with everything from going to the bathroom to brushing her hair. She had to have two injections of blood thinner in her abdomen every day for four months. Her mother, Darlene Mitchell, helped care for her.

“It’s a burden on your entire family,” Alley said. “I was bedridden for three months.”

Alley eventually progressed into a wheelchair and underwent six months of physical therapy to learn how to walk again. She recalled the first time she had to get back into a car.

“I sat there and just cried,” said Alley, who was still in wheelchair at the time. “I was terrified. It took me a long time. It was awful getting into a car. I think nights are worse being in a vehicle, because it happened at night. It’s getting a lot better, but it’s really hard.”

Reflecting on her experience, Alley said, “It’s like that person took a little bit of your safety. You don’t imagine anything like that ever happening to you.”

At least she hasn’t had nightmares about the wreck.

“I think that’s a blessing,” Alley said.

But the Alleys’ waking nightmare still hasn’t ended.

The driver who hit them — a man identified by state troopers as Abelardo Martinzez Juarez, 28, of Asheboro — had no driver’s license and no insurance of his own. He was driving his girlfriend’s car, and she had just $30,000 in liability coverage on her car.

That means that the Alleys had to pay for much of their medical care out of pocket, leaving them with thousands of dollars in bills. Brian Alley’s bills totaled about $20,000, and he had no medical insurance at the time. Tabitha Alley’s bills have totaled about $140,000, and insurance has covered about 80 percent of them.

Making the situation even worse was that Tabitha Alley was forced to miss the last two months of her first year as a teacher. She quickly used up her 10 paid sick days. Co-workers donated some of their time off to help, but her salary was still reduced.

It appeared that Alley would also miss the first few months of the 2005-06 school year. Doctors told her she would be lucky to be walking with a walker by October or November 2005, but she proved them wrong. Hobbling on a cane, she started back to school with everyone else in August 2005.

“They didn’t want me to,” Alley said, recalling her doctor’s advice. “It was really hard being a kindergarten teacher walking with a cane with those kids. And my job consists of getting up and down on the floor a lot with the kids, and it’s really hard. Even now, it’s really hard for me to get down on the floor and up off the floor.”

But Alley said she hasn’t considered a career change.

“I’ve kind of gotten used to it,” she said. “It’s a little bit better now.”

Alley said she believes her positive attitude helped her recover more quickly. That, and a lot of hard work.

“You’re looking at people watching them walk and you’re just wishing that you could walk like that,” she said. “You think, ‘I’m not ever going to be able to be normal again.’”

But Brian Alley said his wife never gave up hope.

“She didn’t lose her spirit,” he said. “She kept happy and was strong-willed.”

Since January, Tabitha Alley has undergone three more surgical procedures. Her most recent surgery was a couple of weeks ago, when doctors at Baptist removed a screw in her foot to try to alleviate some swelling and pain. They are also keeping an eye on her hip for the next couple of years, because it still might have to replaced. And Alley wonders if she will be able to have children one day. She believes that she will, but she will have to wait to find out for sure.

And it was all because an alleged drunk driver who should not have been on the road apparently fell asleep behind the wheel, Alley said.

Trooper Jed Frye, who investigated the crash, said Juarez had the smell of alcohol on his breath and beer cans in his car that night. His vehicle overturned after the collision, and he was treated at Randolph Hospital for his injuries and released. A third vehicle was hit by debris.

Frye charged Juarez, whose address at the time was 4079 U.S. 64 East, with driving while impaired, driving left of center and driving with his license revoked. Since then, Juarez has disappeared. There is a standing order for his arrest for failing to appear in court, the Randolph County Clerk of Court’s Office said.

Court records show Juarez was convicted of DWI in 1997, when he was sentenced to 30 days in jail. But the sentence was suspended for a year of unsupervised probation. He was also ordered to pay $165 in fines and costs.

Alley said learning about Juarez’s record and observing court as she waited for his case to come up have been an eye-opening experience for her. She said she watched as one DWI defendant after another got probation rather than active jail time. Alley said she believes laws need to be changed to try to stop repeat offenders.

“If they’ve done it one time, they’re probably going to do it again,” she said.

No insurance, no assets

The Alleys have gone to Crumley & Associates Attorneys at Law in the hopes of recovering some of their money in civil court.

But attorney Bob Crumley said it’s rare that a driver who has no automobile insurance has any assets that victims can go after in court. Even if an uninsured or underinsured offender owns a modest home, a car and other property, North Carolina law contains exemptions that would allow him or her to protect those assets.

Even when uninsured or underinsured motorists cause wrecks that kill or cripple people, Crumley said, “There’s been plenty of times that I’ve sat across from a family that’s been financially destroyed and tell them there’s nothing we can do.”

Crumley said his firm has seen a sharp increase in recent years in the number of wrecks involving uninsured motorists. But the biggest problem is with drivers who carry the minimum liability insurance of $30,000. He said the sobering truth is that motorists without uninsured/underinsured coverage are gambling every time they get in their vehicles. Crumley said $100,000 is a good amount of coverage to carry.

“It provides a valuable benefit,” Crumley said, adding that even motorists who believe they have “100 percent coverage” should check their policies for uninsured/underinsured protection. Often, he said, it is not included.

Crumley and Sgt. Pete Waddell of the N.C. Highway Patrol also reminded the victims of drunk drivers that there is compensation available to them through the state, although it likely would not come close to covering all of their expenses. Waddell said officers can’t give legal advice, but they can inform victims about the state compensation.

“We send them in that direction,” Waddell said. “We try to give them as much guidance as we can.”

‘A lot of little prayers’

Being a victim, and losing some peace of mind, hasn’t come easily for Craig Whittington.

Whittington, 45, has spent a lifetime working in public safety helping people in trouble. Before becoming 911 coordinator in Guilford County, the Lexington native was a volunteer firefighter, a paramedic and a police officer.

“My life’s always been handle one thing, then go to the next,” Whittington said.

As many wrecks as he has responded to in his lifetime, he thought it would be easier to put behind him the April 9 wreck that seriously injured him and killed a 23-year-old.

But Whittington still carries scars from the wreck on his soul.

He has nightmares about it. When he sees a white car on the road, he thinks about that fateful Sunday afternoon. And his 11-year-old daughter is now afraid for him to travel for his frequent work-related trips. He says he tries to comfort her; but he wonders how reassuring his words are when he’s not sure he even believes them.

He’s hoping time and the Good Lord will help heal those invisible wounds.

“I kind of figure it’ll work itself out,” he said. “You say a lot of little prayers. I’m saying a lot of little prayers.”

Like Alley, Whittington’s vehicle was struck by an alleged drunk driver. The difference is that while the car that hit the Alleys was traveling the 55-mph speed limit, the vehicle that hit Whittington’s sport-utility vehicle was traveling an estimated 75 mph at impact after sliding sideways for more than 200 feet on U.S. 220 Business north of Randleman.

“That boy was flying,” said Whittington, who saw the car passing and fishtailing before realizing that it was going to hit him. “And just at the instant, I thought, ‘Oh, God! He’s going to hit me!’”

Whittington was taken to High Point Regional Hospital with a fractured pelvis and bruising to his chest and abdomen after the crash. He said he’s rolled up about $20,000 in medical bills as a result of the wreck, which happened at about 1:08 p.m. as he was on the way to the airport in Greensboro to fly to a 911 conference in Nashville, Tenn.

The doctor’s bills keep coming, but Whittington seems less concerned about the money than he is with Brian Matthew Walden, the Randleman man who was killed in the crash. The 23-year-old man was a passenger in the speeding car which was ripped in half when it slammed broadside against the front end of Whittington’s 2003 Chevrolet Trailblazer.

Images and sounds from that day flash through Whittington’s mind like a Microsoft Power Point presentation, he said. It was hours after the crash before he was thinking clearly enough to comprehend that a young man had died in the crash. Even more troubling to him was that Walden died in a seat belt, while the alleged drunk driver, Frank Thomas Bennett, 33, was thrown from the car and survived with injuries. Whittington said the facts seemed a mockery of what he had been preaching for years, that seat belts save lives.

Whittington said if he had been in the state of mind to realize at the scene that day that Walden was in the wrecked car, his emergency worker’s instincts probably would have kicked in and he might have tried to help the man.

“Twenty-three-year-olds shouldn’t die,” he said, his voice filled with sadness and anger. “They shouldn’t die. It shouldn’t happen.”

Whittington also worries that Bennett will get away with what he believes is murder.

Bennett, of 7177 Power Line Road, Lot 4, Randleman, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the crash, along with DWI, driving with no insurance, driving left of center, improper passing, driving with an open container of alcohol and having an expired license plate on his 1997 Pontiac.

The highway patrol said tests show that Walden had also been drinking at the time of his death.

But Whittington said that’s no excuse for charging Bennett with anything less than murder. He said a drunk driver who kills someone with a vehicle should be treated the same as a suspect who kills someone with a gun or knife.

“That needs to be charged as murder, not as manslaughter,” Whittington said. “It almost relegates that kid (Walden) to being less than human.”

“I’d like to see (Bennett) put away for murder forever,” Whittington continued. “I want to see him serve out every day of his life having to think about what he did to that 23-year-old, what he did to me, and what he could have done. This could have been so much worse.”

Whittington shudders at thoughts of what could have happened that day.

What if his wife, Melissa Whittington, had been in the passenger seat on the side of the vehicle that had the most damage? What if he had come along a minute or two earlier or later and Bennett’s car had instead crashed into a van carrying a family or a church group? What if Bennett had hit a child walking beside the road?

Another question that bothers Whittington is that while he’s stuck with thousands of dollars worth of medical bills from High Point Regional Hospital, who’s going to pay for the care that Bennett received at Duke University Medical Center? If Bennett has no medical insurance, it’s likely the hospital will have to write off his bills and charge other patients more.

“I’ve tried not to be mad about it, but it really ticks me off,” Whittington said. “I refuse to let what this guy did make me less of a person. But I feel it in my heart that someone has to stand up and say, ‘This crap has to stop. This stuff has to end.’ We can’t let people do this and walk away and not do anything about it.”

Court records show Bennett has a long record of traffic offenses in Randolph County.

Since 1989, he has been convicted of speeding, reckless driving to endanger, unsafe movement, driving with no operator’s license, driving while his license was revoked, failure to stop for a blue light and siren and driving with no insurance, records show. He has more than one conviction for several of the offenses.

Records also show that the district attorney’s office dismissed a number of Bennett’s recent traffic charges, including driving while license revoked, reckless driving to endanger, failure to heed a blue light or siren, unsafe passing, failure to stop for a red light and felonious speeding to elude arrest in 2002.

In 2005, the district attorney dismissed a charge of driving with no operator’s license filed against Bennett. And this year, prosecutors have dismissed Bennett’s charges for driving with no operator’s license, driving with an expired license plate and operating a vehicle.

Bennett’s record also includes convictions for assault on a female, carrying a concealed weapon, contempt of court, first degree trespassing, solicitation to commit felonious sale or delivery of cocaine, communicating threats, resisting an officer, simple assault, misdemeanor possession of marijuana, misdemeanor possession of stolen goods, misdemeanor breaking and entering, misdemeanor failure to support an illegitimate child, possession of cocaine, possession of cocaine with intent to sell or deliver, sale or delivery of cocaine, probation violation.

N.C. Department of Correction records show Bennett served a year in prison from 1999-2000 for drug convictions.

He currently has other charges pending against him for possession of a stolen firearm and possession of a firearm by a felon, with a trial date of July 17, 2006, records show.

Whittington said he knows that it would probably do him little good to sue Bennett, but he at least wants his chance to speak at the man’s criminal trial.

“When someone with an extensive criminal past willfully does something that causes the loss of a human life and the injury of another, and impacts the lives of the families of those killed and injured, not to mention the financial cost to the victims, then justice demands that the victims and the accused have their day in court,” Whittington said.

XXX

Contact staff writer Mark Brumley at 626-6119 or email him at mbrumley@courier-tribune.com.

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