A DUI death is no accident
/The Boston Herald
BEVERLY BECKHAM
He can't talk about it. Not now. The pain is too new. Harry Hewitt saw his wife killed last Saturday night. "I was right there," he says.
Right behind her as she traveled home from a dinner the two had shared.
Right behind her, driving his car because she had cashiered at Wal-Mart that day and he had met her after and taken her to eat and then dropped her back at her car.
Right behind her, watching her lead the way home.
Virgie and Harry Hewitt were married 54 years and who knows how many more they would have had together if David Blanchette, 22, of Maynard, had simply obeyed the rules. Instead, according to police, he drove through a stop sign in Hudson at 45 mph and barreled into Virgie Hewitt, flipping her car over, sending it off the road and trapping her inside.
And Harry Hewitt, following just feet behind, saw it all.
"I am sorry I killed them. I didn't mean it," Hudson police report Blanchette said the night of the crash. Yet at his arraignment two days later, he pleaded not guilty to motor vehicle homicide, operating under the influence of alcohol, recklessness, speeding and failing to stop or yield. "This is very difficult for everybody, a very tough event," his lawyer said, as if his client is a victim too.
Police found Virgie Hewitt pinned inside her car; Blanchette's passenger, David Chappell, 21, lying injured on the ground; and Blanchette sitting on top of his car. Blanchette, police say, was having difficulty walking and maintaining his balance. His face was flushed and his eyes were red.
A good defense lawyer will attribute these things to trauma.
"I was just (expletive deleted) around and I didn't see the sign," Blanchette said in a "slurred" voice, according to the police report.
A good defense lawyer will argue that a slurred voice is a condition of shock.
Police also found empty beer cans, an open bottle of whisky and a small nip outside the passenger door of Blanchette's car.
A good defense lawyer will contend that the presence of alcohol at a crash is no proof that a person has been drinking.
While Blanchette's family was posting $ 5,000 cash bail Monday so that Blanchette could go home, Virgie Hewitt, who would have turned 76 that day, was being embalmed at the Merrill-Carleton Funeral Home, where her funeral will be held this morning.
One minute Virgie Hewitt, was on her way home. The next minute she was trapped in her car, dying. "He [Harry Hewitt] tried to get her out because the car was upside down," her sister, Norma Ferri, said.
Virgie Hewitt's obituary lists the cause of death as "injuries received in an automobile accident." Her obituary is wrong. This was no accident.
It's the same old story. Tears and "I didn't mean it," a tragic mistake by someone undone by what happened, but not so undone that he didn't have the presence of mind to refuse to take a breathalyzer test the night of the crash.
One lion kills another at a zoo and it's a tragedy. A human being is killed on the road and it's a 10-second report and will we have snow tomorrow?
The young man made a mistake. He didn't mean it. He has his whole life ahead of him. This is what we will hear. And we will hear nothing of a 75-year-old woman who had a life, too.
Until we start looking at drunken drivers with contempt instead of compassion, this will go on.
"I'm sorry I can't say much about it, now. Maybe in a few weeks," Harry Hewitt says on the telephone. "I was right there," he says. "I was right there."
