Heather Dowd 1973-1995

Heather Anne Dowd was a victim of a DUI crash. Heather was not a member of my immediate family, but our friendship was close like family. We were college roommates.

Do you know where you were on October 9th, 1995? I do, it was Labor Day and a beautiful day in Washington, DC. I was leaving for a bike ride when I got the call, the only words that I remember were "Heather is dead" "Heather is dead". Imagine yourself in a similar situation, an ordinary day you are on your way somewhere, and how you might react to that type of call.

When I heard the words "Heather is dead", I just could not believe it. I sat in a daze for awhile and felt as though there was a cyclone of activity while my roommate ran around my room packing my suitcase and calling the airlines for the next flight out to Tucson. One week later I heard these words about Heather at the memorial service.

I wanted to give you this excerpt to illustrate just how senseless the results are of a drunk driver.

At 1:30 am in the morning, Heather Anne Dowd drove to pick up her boyfriend, Tom Doyle, from work. She was turning right on green when Thad Jones ran a red light and hit her car with such force that it went sideways and then airborne, striking another car. The car was only twisted metal in the end. You could not even tell that it had been a car.

She was just running a simple errand, doing a close friend a favor. She was 21 years old. She died at the scene.

Her passenger, Tom Doyle, was not so lucky. The impact of the crash tore his seat belt completely apart. He was resting on the roof of the car as it lay upside down in the intersection. When he arrived at the emergency room he was pronounced dead on arrival. But he did survive. He sustained 11 broken ribs, his pelvis was fractured in two places, both lungs collapsed, and had a closed head injury where his brain began to swell.

Doctors removed a fist-sized portion of his skull. He spent the following three weeks in a coma. While he was comatose he also developed a life-threatening lung infection. That is about as close to dead as is possible.

When he finally came out of his coma, he had no memory of the accident and could not comprehend that Heather was dead. It was just too painful.

The afternoon that Mr. Jones killed Heather, he attended a company picnic. Mr. Jones became intoxicated and was cut off from drinking at this picnic. He went to a friend's house and from there they went to a bar. After a night of drinking he left on his own, driving.

Unfortunately, this wasn't the first time that Mr. Jones was intoxicated behind the wheel of his car. In 1994, Mr. Jones drove his car into a nursing home building and almost struck a pedestrian outside the building and an elderly woman in a wheelchair inside the room. The State of Arizona used a private testing facility for his drug and alcohol test, and when the facility was shut down the tests were lost. Because of this, there was no conviction. Thad Jones was back out on the street, driving.

His actions were not an accident. Mr. Jones was leading his life in such a way that there is no surprise that the road he was heading down ended with death, broken bodies, and our broken hearts.

Someone at Heather's memorial service said it best "The newspaper article mistakenly said only four were hurt".

Read more about Heather.

• Newspaper article
• Newspaper article #2
• Newspaper article #3
• Newspaper article #4
• Newspaper article #5