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Bumping this up because I feel we all should read this and take a moment for our sister.
Here is the article:
Driver gets 3 years in fatal hit-and-run; emotional day in court
By Janet Burkitt
Times Snohomish County bureau
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For more than an hour yesterday, Roy Gursli listened to a family tell him in eloquent terms how he ruined their lives.
Last Oct. 26, Gursli struck down Naval ensign Carrie Shoemaker while driving through downtown Everett with a blood-alcohol level nearly three times the legal limit. Then he drove away. Ever since, "We live our lives laboriously and slowly, walking through a thick fog," Shoemaker's father, Michael, said in Snohomish County Superior Court.
"Our world has collapsed upon us."
Judge Thomas Wynne gave Gursli a three-year sentence for hit-and-run death, the middle of the standard range for the felony charge, which Gursli had pleaded guilty to this summer. The 45-year-old Lynnwood man also pleaded guilty to driving under the influence, for which he got two days in jail, and two years' probation.
Michael Shoemaker noted that no one in his family would ever be paroled or free. The Philadelphia-area father spoke of shutting his office door and sobbing after the death of his oldest daughter.
He read a letter from his younger son, Carrie's 20-year-old brother Matt, who could not bear to attend the sentencing and face the man who killed his sister. He read another letter from his other son, Carrie's twin brother Mike, who couldn't come because he's stationed on the USS Nassau somewhere in the Mediterranean.
Mike wrote about being scared of his birthday, secretly hoping it would pass quietly because for the first time, he would be older than Carrie.
They brought a videotape of her life that was played in court. She was a young woman who never made less than an "A" in high school, even though, as a child in a military family, she attended three different schools. She was a National Merit Scholar and class valedictorian. Funny and athletic, she put herself through Duke University with a naval scholarship, pledged Alpha Delta Pi sorority, played on the university's soccer team, earned a 3.4 grade-point average with a double-engineering major, and made many friends.
After she was killed, her mother, Denice, found out that instead of spending her money on the normal indulgences of a 23-year-old woman, Carrie had secretly socked away $3,000 for her youngest sister's college education.
That 13-year-old sister, Ashley, said she is terrified to cross the street now, and has lost one of the only people she could really talk to. Her 18-year-old sister, Kendahl, rubbed Ashley's back as the younger girl tried to get the words out, and then described how her own life fell apart after Carrie's death. Kendahl had nightmares every night for five months, and regrets that when she has children one day, they will never know Carrie's amazing smile or personality.
Carrie's fiancé, Travis Williams, a Naval Academy graduate who has signed a contract with the Green Bay Packers, said he wanted to marry her from the moment he met her on a summer cruise on the USS Paul F. Foster.
"We had an amazing love," the tall, handsome 24-year-old said, sobbing. "It's something that you see out of the movies."
Denice Shoemaker, an emergency-room nurse, tried to look at Gursli several times while she talked about Carrie, and about warning her children long before Carrie's death about the dangers of drunken driving. But she kept turning back toward the judge.
During the sentence hearing, a gray-haired news photographer wiped his eye. A Snohomish County marshal bit his lip. A little blond boy buried his head in both his hands and wept. Deputy Prosecutor Joan Cavagnaro said it was the saddest case she'd seen in 20 years as a prosecutor.
Gursli's teenage daughter stood up, holding a green spiral notebook, and said she would give her life for Carrie's if she could. She said she felt caught in the middle, because she felt for the Shoemakers, but knew that her father was going through a lot, too. Over the past year, she said she saw him cry for the first time.
Gursli said he'd been praying for peace and healing for both families. "For me to say I'm sorry will never be able to satisfy the pain of Miss Shoemaker's family and friends," he said.
And his lawyer, Mark Mestel, told the court he would remember Gursli for quite some time. "Because he would come into my office and just sit there and stare into space," he said, "... distraught."
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"Courage is not the absence of fear, but the capacity to act despite our fears" John McCain
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." Eleanor Roosevelt
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Sad story about a ADPi that was killed a year ago..
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