One More For The End Of The Road

In an all too familiar story the April 20th edition of the Las Vegas Sun website reported:

An 18-year-old UNLV student has died from injuries suffered late Wednesday in a crash involving a suspected drunken driver.
The Clark County Coroner’s Office identified the student as Lindsay Mychael Bennett of Las Vegas, who died after she was struck by a driver going the wrong way shortly before 9:30 p.m.
The cause of her death was several blunt force trauma injuries from the collision, a spokeswoman for the coroner’s office said. She died of her injuries Friday night, authorities said today.

This happened a few days before her 19th birthday.

The driver in a suspected DUI crash that killed an 18-year-old UNLV student has been identified as 45-year-old Vladimir Lagerev.
Lagerev was booked into the Clark County Detention Center on charges of death from DUI alcohol, involuntary manslaughter and no proof of insurance, according to detention center records.

I do not agree with charging this man with involuntary manslaughter. I think he and any drunk driver who kills someone should be charged with first degree murder. I think if you get behind the wheel of a car drunk you have made a decision that it is worth someone dying for you to get home from the bar.

Driving drunk is just like walking into several crowed movie theaters with a loaded gun and firing random shots. You may not hit someone the first 30 times you do it but eventually you’re going to hurt or kill someone.

A death resulting from drunk driving should be a mandatory life without parole sentence. Will that keep people from driving drunk? About as much as the death penalty has stopped murder. What it will do is take one criminal who endangers the life of everybody who is unlucky enough to be on the same road and make sure he or she never has the chance to do it again.