"The sadness and despair that is with me every day, I can't even put into words," Jennifer says. He did anyway, driving for about three miles the wrong way on the parkway before slamming into the Flynns' limousine and tearing their lives apart. On the night of the Flynns' wedding, Heidgen was drinking at a friend's party in a house on Long Island. He had a blood alcohol content over three times the legal limit. Martin Heidgen, a 24-year-old insurance salesman, was driving the pickup truck. And all that was left of Kate Marie was her head, that I was able to take," she remembers. "I reached for Kate and she was on the floor. She's just gotta be hurt real bad.' But I didn't know what Jen was looking at, what Jen saw." "And I kept saying, 'No she can't be dead. "The first thing I heard was my wife screaming, 'Neil, Katie's dead,'" Katie father's Neil remembers. Virtually everyone suffered severe, life-threatening injuries, and then there was Katie. The limousine was so mangled that members of the Flynn family had to be cut out of the wreckage. Stanley Rabinowitz, the limo driver, was killed instantly. Both cars were totally destroyed, but that was the least of it. It happened so quickly I remember saying, 'Oh my God, we're gonna get hit.'" "I watched this single light come toward me and all of a sudden it went from a single light to a double light. And I had to think for a second of what that was, 'cause that, it was just out of place," Denise remembers. Chris and Denise Tangney, Katie's grandparents, saw the truck coming from the back of the limo. But as they were being driven home on a parkway on Long Island, a pickup truck came barreling straight at them in the wrong direction. "I deserve whatever time I get.The family had hired a limo to take them home from the wedding so they could dance and party with no worries. "Not only did I affect two families, but I affected a community, a state, and for that, I'm sorry," he said.
#2009 drunk drivers killed full
"I take full accountability for what I've done," Cross said during his parole hearing. He has also earned his high-school diploma and 25 credits from Utah State University. Since his incarceration he has completed several substance-abuse courses and become actively involved in Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12-step program run by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 13 parole hearing, Cross acknowledged that he is an alcoholic. He was sentenced to serve two terms of one to 15 years in prison and one term of zero to five years in prison, all consecutively.ĭuring his Oct. He pleaded guilty to two counts of automobile homicide and the DUI charge in a plea deal with Grand County prosecutors. Kathleen Parry's 6-year-old daughter, Emma, survived the crash with head and facial injuries.Īt the time, Cross was on probation for his fourth DUI conviction.Ĭross was charged in 7th District Court with three second-degree felony counts of automobile homicide, felony DUI and four misdemeanor traffic violations. The crash killed the vehicle's driver, Kathleen Parry, 35, and her parents, James Parry, 72, and Olive Parry, 67, all of Moab. He continued to drink throughout the day and bought more beer just before he crashed head-on into a vehicle on state Route 128 near Moab about 1:30 p.m. 3, 2004, after his graveyard shift ended, according to a report prepared for his parole hearing. The Utah Board of Pardons and Parole has scheduled an October 2013 rehearing for Rex Allen Cross.Ĭross began drinking beer at 6 a.m.
#2009 drunk drivers killed driver
A drunken driver who killed three members of a Moab family in a 2004 crash has been denied parole.