Cecilia Williams wants to make drunk drivers quite literally pay for what they have done
A bereaved mother wants to make drunk drivers pay for child support after her son, his fiancé and their child were killed in a car crash.
Cecilia Williams and her family were left heartbroken when they lost Cordell, fiancé Lacey and their four-month-old son Cordell II in April last year.
Williams has been looking after her son’s two other children, five-year-old Bentley and three-year-old Mason, ever since.
David Thereby, who was driving the other vehicle, was allegedly twice the legal limit, CBS reports and had been charged with three counts of Driving Under the Influence (DUI) death of another.
Williams is now on a mission to get Bentley’s Law – named after her eldest grandson – passed in every US state. The proposed law would make drunk drivers pay child support for the surviving children until age 18 when a parent is killed in a drunk-driving crash, on top of the prison sentence they receive.
“I want offenders to see how families truly suffer,” Williams told PEOPLE, “how their actions affect everybody.”
About 32 people die in drunk-driving crashes in the US every day, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports, which is one person every 45 minutes. In the UK, government figures for 2019, estimate that rougly 230 people were killed in accidents where at least one driver was over the drink-drive limit.
Tennessee has already passed a bill modelled on Bentley’s Law and similar bills are being drafted and filed in twelve other states: Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Virginia.
Williams hopes the law will stop people driving under the influence.
Writing on her GoFundMe page, which has raised over $3,500 in support of the mission, Williams said: “We have to make a change, and hold the offenders accountable for their actions, as we all suffer a life sentence of loosing our children due to a completely preventable crash.”
Related links:
- Drunk driver blames covid when caught on motorway with two missing tyres
- Killer drivers could be jailed for life under new law
- Driver who downed 28 drinks after bottomless brunch binge jailed after hitting pedestrian
