MANDEVILLE, La. — City leaders are urging anyone riding in a vehicle to wear a seatbelt and for drivers not to drink and drive.
Lisa Miller says her son was driving home when an impaired driver drove into him and killed him. At a forum in Mandeville, leaders highlighted the devasting repercussions of drunk driving.
Miller said her son Jarrod Miller was "My firstborn and only son. He was 33 years old. He had been married for six years to a lovely lady named Anne, and they had a four-year-old little girl."
On August 8, 2020, his life was snatched away from him, she said, "He was coming home from work on his motorcycle, and an impaired driver turned left in front of him, leaving him no reaction time and killed him on impact."
Mandeville Police Chief Todd Schliem said the most serious accident fatalities involve alcohol and drugs. Miller said, "It's the most devastating and maddening thing that could ever happen."
Fatality Analysis Reporting System, also known as FARS data, found in 2021, 31 percent of vehicle crashes in Louisiana were alcohol-related, with 301 alcohol-impaired driving fatalities. The number of fatalities dropped in 2022 to 267.
Law enforcement on the Northshore says they work every day to get impaired drivers off the road. Chief Schliem said, "We will be fully staffed, and for the first time a city the size of Mandeville we will have a full-time traffic division, and their one job and one job only, traffic enforcement."
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Louisiana’s seat belt use was 87.5% in 2019.
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NOPD reported a 7-year-old boy was ejected from a vehicle and killed when two cars collided near the intersection of South Broad Street and Cleveland Avenue Sunday afternoon. NOPD says initial reports found the child was not wearing a seat belt at the time of the crash.
Seatbelts, along with impaired driving, were a topic at the Louisiana Highway Safety Commission's press conference. St Tammany Parish Sheriff Randy Smith said, "The funds that we use are for education our deputies get overtime to go out and enforce drunk drivers... We also go out and enforce seatbelt safety we also work the child seat safety program."
The consensus to reducing the number of deaths on our roads is education, a message to those who choose to get behind the wheel after drinking, Pastor Wendell Sams with Divine Directions Ministry, said, "Please when you are on the highways, when you're on the streets think about somebody else, because the life you save, might just be your own."
And a final word from a grieving mother, who had to bury her child, "It's a life sentence for us, there's always going to be an empty chair at every family gathering, every birthday, every holiday, and his little girl is growing up without a daddy."
According to District Attorney Ricky Babin, Lawrence Furlow pled guilty to Negligent Homicide and DWI 4th Offense. The accident happened in Ascension Parish. Furlow was sentenced to 20 years.
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