Mind-Boggled Homicide
Unforgivable, yet we find excuses for such people. That they are victims of their own cravings. That they cannot control their needs. We fail to view them as the threats that they really are. They are living, breathing time bombs. And from time to time one of them creates an explosion that maims or kills an innocent among us.
A woman out drinking, determined to do what she has always done, satisfy her need by intoxicating herself beyond physical and mental normalcy. When the bar owner, recognizing her state of intoxication takes it personally and offers to drive her to her destination, she spurns the offer and drives off on her own.
Beside her another bottle of wine. She is a repeat offender. Her license was suspended. But Samira Daoud felt entitled to drink herself close to insensibility, to clamber into her pickup truck, more drinks surrounding her which she would pick up at her leisure, while careening in the dark around the rural stretches of roadways within the City of Ottawa.
Truly bad fortune had a young man of sixteen cycling as he always did, back home from work. Where this woman who had already caused other drivers on the road to swerve out of her way, and who had crashed over a median, decided to do a U-turn and slammed into the back of Alex Hayes' bicycle with such violence that he was thrown 39 metres into an adjoining ditch.
Where he remained, his lifeless body discovered three hours later. His bicycle sitting on the roadway, utterly mangled. Alex Hayes' parents would wait for him to arrive home, as usual. And they would wait in vain. They will never again hear their boy's laughter, watch him grow, have the pleasure of his company.
Police were alerted to reports of someone driving haphazardly, repeatedly crossing over onto the opposite lane, and the truck, now heavily damaged, was forced to a stop, hitting the front bumper of a police cruiser. The police officer noted her reeking breath and witnessed empty beer cans littered in the truck cab.
She offered sex to him in exchange for her release. Of the three breath samples taken at the police station, the first registered three times the legal limit of 80, at 259 milligrams alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood. She insisted she hadn't hit anyone on the road. She did admit to being drunk.
Her criminal record lists various alcohol-and-driving offences. That all occurred last fall. The Crown prosecutor during her trial is asking for up to 10 years in prison on the charge of impaired driving causing death, to which she has pleaded guilty. But she did apologize. For what that is worth.
"I did not know your son", she told Alex Hayes' mother. "But I know Alexander will be carried in my heart, just as he will be in yours." Well, not quite. Not nearly in the same way. And her expression of remorse, understandably, means nothing whatever to Alex Hayes' mother. She is bereft of her child.
Her child's killer may serve a few years' sentence in prison, and then she will be free to resume her life. One that she has horribly mangled, just as she did the boy's bicycle. Ironically, according to Daoud's sister, another sister had been killed by a drunk driver in Ethiopia.
How much sense does that make?
A woman out drinking, determined to do what she has always done, satisfy her need by intoxicating herself beyond physical and mental normalcy. When the bar owner, recognizing her state of intoxication takes it personally and offers to drive her to her destination, she spurns the offer and drives off on her own.
Beside her another bottle of wine. She is a repeat offender. Her license was suspended. But Samira Daoud felt entitled to drink herself close to insensibility, to clamber into her pickup truck, more drinks surrounding her which she would pick up at her leisure, while careening in the dark around the rural stretches of roadways within the City of Ottawa.
Truly bad fortune had a young man of sixteen cycling as he always did, back home from work. Where this woman who had already caused other drivers on the road to swerve out of her way, and who had crashed over a median, decided to do a U-turn and slammed into the back of Alex Hayes' bicycle with such violence that he was thrown 39 metres into an adjoining ditch.
Where he remained, his lifeless body discovered three hours later. His bicycle sitting on the roadway, utterly mangled. Alex Hayes' parents would wait for him to arrive home, as usual. And they would wait in vain. They will never again hear their boy's laughter, watch him grow, have the pleasure of his company.
Police were alerted to reports of someone driving haphazardly, repeatedly crossing over onto the opposite lane, and the truck, now heavily damaged, was forced to a stop, hitting the front bumper of a police cruiser. The police officer noted her reeking breath and witnessed empty beer cans littered in the truck cab.
She offered sex to him in exchange for her release. Of the three breath samples taken at the police station, the first registered three times the legal limit of 80, at 259 milligrams alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood. She insisted she hadn't hit anyone on the road. She did admit to being drunk.
Her criminal record lists various alcohol-and-driving offences. That all occurred last fall. The Crown prosecutor during her trial is asking for up to 10 years in prison on the charge of impaired driving causing death, to which she has pleaded guilty. But she did apologize. For what that is worth.
"I did not know your son", she told Alex Hayes' mother. "But I know Alexander will be carried in my heart, just as he will be in yours." Well, not quite. Not nearly in the same way. And her expression of remorse, understandably, means nothing whatever to Alex Hayes' mother. She is bereft of her child.
Her child's killer may serve a few years' sentence in prison, and then she will be free to resume her life. One that she has horribly mangled, just as she did the boy's bicycle. Ironically, according to Daoud's sister, another sister had been killed by a drunk driver in Ethiopia.
How much sense does that make?
Labels: Human Relations, Justice, Ottawa
posted by Pieface | 8:06 PM
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