My dad now comes on Sunday evenings to have dinner with us. We often play games, or he reads or tells my kids one of his famous "Lone Ranger Stories" that he's made up. It's awesome!
Matthew got his finger smashed in the door at church one Sunday. It was awesome. It was his middle finger. Jon Foulger thought it was funny and took this picture for all posterity to remember the unfortunate event....
And finally the D.A. The case against the man who killed my mom is moving forward. He's been charged with manslaughter. They could have charged him with vehicular or intoxicated manslaughter but the punishment is the same, and manslaughter is easier to prove and convict on, the other types puts more burden on the DA to prove. The maximum punishment is 20 years in jail.
Mathew Thomas Wise's tox screen (blood toxicology test) still hasn't come back, but will later not show any sign of an illegal substance. Mr. Wise admitted to smoking "K2" a legal form of synthetic marijuana to the paramedics at the scene. K2 doesn't show up in a tox screen, and it's only legal because it is too hard to regulate. If it was banned, a slightly different chemical compound would hit the market under a different name, and the circle goes round and round. Hind sight, we are so glad we just stuck with manslaughter as the intoxication-manslaughter would have been really hard to prove with a "clean" tox screen.
The case has been assigned to the Collin County DA's office and we met with Randy Goodwin and his deputy Robin Laughn. Our initial meeting was really special. Dad, Pearl and I met with them. We went over all the facts of the case and the timeline of how things would likely go. We were very concerned about how low of a bail he got, only $25,000. And the rule of thumb was that you only need to post 10% of it to bond out. We were VERY VERY concerned someone would bail him out and he'd disappear. Dad pressured Randy really hard to ask for the bail to be increased. But without a good reason, a judge wouldn't raise it.
The one thing that was really special was, towards the end of our meeting, my dad shared with him that while we want justice for mom, we believe that Mathew will get what's coming to him on the other side, that God will be the perfect judge. Dad started sharing a bit of what our faith believes in that we knew that Mom was fine and happy and had likely forgiven him already. Randy asked what church we went to. And when dad answered, "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints", Randy said, "I go to that church too." Immediately we felt mom there. We all did. We all got teary-eyed (even Randy) and he promised us that he would do his very best work. We knew that mom was having influence on the events of things and probably had a hand in this case being given to Randy. If nothing else there was an immediate peace that Randy understood our family on a new and deeper level. We had a shared value system and it would influence the way he handled the case.
As things went forward he kept us very involved in every aspect of this case. He's a District Attorney, paid for by our tax dollars, he was prosecuting Mathew Wise because he broke the law, but in every way we felt as though he was working for us, that our opinions mattered. He didn't move forward on things unless he had our family's blessing. It was such a tender mercy.
As far as perusing things civilly against Mathew and Pamela Ripperda (his boss, who gave him access to her car, in spite of a suspended license), we've decided not to move forward. The money awarded to dad as a result of her death are tricky. Mom was Pearl's legal guardian and a judge could award a chunk of it to her (which wouldn't be good), and lawyers take a cut of anything. We were advised that there weren't many assets held by either of them that we could get. Dad also had a very strong impression from Mom that we shouldn't hire an attorney. We'd found one, interviewed him, and were ready to sign with him at the time of the family reunion in June, but just in time, some settlement monies came in that were much more than we expected and dad felt such peace about taking it and just leaving the civil charges alone.
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