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Monday, November 6, 2006
Gwinnett’s street race case and my own dumb decision
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Decisions determine destiny. Either by design or default, our lives are a summary of prior decisions that we or others made.
Sometimes one unfortunate decision will reverberate long after a deed is done.
Sorrowfully, many people - especially teenagers - do not understand how important it is to try to consistently make the right choices until confronted with the consequences of a wrong choice.
Wendy Jennings and Susan Osley, both 20, continue to be bombarded with the fallout of their foolhardy decision three and a half years ago to race their BMWs on Peachtree Parkway in Norcross.
Jennings said she has no memory of the race or the crash. Osley said she did it “I guess to get a rush.” What she found instead was death and devastation.
Both vehicles were traveling at more than 80 miles per hour. Jennings unable to control her car, crossed the median, flipped, and slammed into the Honda Accord driven by Julia Burns, 61, of Duluth. Burns was killed.
Jennings’ boyfriend and passenger Jacob Miller, 17, was also killed.
The women do accept responsibility for their roles in the crash and pled guilty to vehicular homicide. They were sentenced on Thursday, November 2.
“What a waste,” said Gwinnett Superior Court Judge Richard Winegarden while issuing sentences to the two defendants. Jennings received five years in prison and 10 years probation. Osley received fours years in prison and 11 years probation.
Hopefully for the families of those killed the sentencing of the women will bring about some sense of closure.
However, the sad end results will likely continue. The families of Burns and Miller are still mourning their needless deaths.
“The last 3 1/2 years have been very difficult,” said Jill Burns, Julia Burns’ daughter, as reported in the AJC. “It is hard for us to deal with Christmas, Easter and Mother’s Day.”
Likewise, the lives of the defendants are irrevocably changed.
While their peers are in college or beginning careers, the women will start serving their prison sentences. Their lives will be subject to court control until middle age.
One poor choice will echo in multiple lives for generations.
When I was 16 and a passenger in my friend Diane’s car, we were challenged by a carload of boys to a race down one of our city’s main thoroughfares.
Misplaced ideas about feminism coupled with youthful exuberance and a flawed belief that bad things only happened to other people inspired us to accept their challenge.
By sheer grace none of us crashed and no one was hurt or killed.
Afterwards, Diane and I both knew we had done a dangerous and dumb thing.
I never participated in or encouraged anyone else to be involved in such reckless and irresponsible behavior again.
Reading about Jennings’ and Osley’s ill-fated decision to drag race reminds me of how fortunate we were.
It gives me pause to think that my one very poor youthful decision could have impacted lives decades later.
Did you make a decision, bad or good, as a teenager that still has consequences for you as an adult?
Have you ever made a poor decision, but luckily escaped devastating consequences?
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