Enough is Enough: A Letter to My Community.

I am writing a letter today, more of a desperate plea, to all the people who live, work or even are just visiting Midland/Odessa…. Stop all this tragedy and loss, stop this increasingly bleak trend of careless driving. What makes this area of Texas such a magnet for the deadliest of poor decisions?
According to a report by Sutliff & Stout: Injury and Accident Law Firm, in an article on newswest9.com, Odessa and Midland are the top two Texas cities with the highest drunk driving fatality rates. So not only are we on the top of the list in Texas for deadly car crashes, just to add more insult to injury, of those crashes most were DUI related. This area has gone from one level of unsafe to another every year for like the last five or six years, or more heck I don’t know! What I do know is that if we want things to change we are going to have to rally together as a community to clean this place up. I drive to the station every day on Hwy 191 and every day as people are speeding past me at over 90 mph and cutting people off and weaving in and out of traffic I have one thought that ALWAYS goes through my mind…. Will I ever see my son again? Will this be the day that a beautiful, amazing, sweet, kind, smart, loving little boy gets his mother taken away from him all because some douche bag is late to work or just can’t stand to go the speed limit? Every time I drive to the station during peak traffic hours I think about how unfair it would be if my son had to go the rest of his life without his momma who loves him more than anyone else on this planet could ever love him. And as I’m thinking those thoughts there are countless families having to go through the rest of their lives without a loved one. The people that have died this year had family and friends, they were mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, moms, dads, best friends, wives, husbands, and they themselves had parents….they left behind people who loved them and will miss them for the rest of their lives. Whatever reason you have for making the decision to get behind a wheel after you’ve been drinking, or simply to ignore the rules of the road that have been put in place to keep people safe…whatever the reason, is it worth all the damage you could ultimately end up causing? Is it worth a human life? Is it worth all the pain you could end up causing so many? I don’t know what needs to happen to turn this sinking ship around but I know something MUST had to change. I want to go home to my son and my family and I know most people in our community feel the same. We have Uber now so I really don’t see any reason for drunk driving to be an issue anymore. Speeding and distracted driving are also an issue and as I talked about in yesterday’s blog the Midland Police Department have already made a plan to send the message that that kind of behavior on the road will not be tolerated.
I want to see my son at the end of every day, I want to take him Trick or Treating again, I want to watch him open Christmas presents again, I don’t want to be taken away from my family and I don’t want anyone else to be taken away from theirs.
So please, I’m begging you, please, stop making these deadly decisions.
Daniel Navarro, 46 of Snyder TX
Darren Sigley, 21 of Odessa, TX
Bradley Eller, 39 of San Antonio, TX
Cody Engle, 28 of Midland, TX
David Glazer of Mamou, LA
Alen Ferreyro, 23 of Laredo, TX
Ricardo Silva-Martinez, 27 or Mexico
Bladimir Rodriguez, 43 of Tampa, FL
Zachery D. Watson, 26 of Tyler, TX
Maria Saucedo, 29 of Midland, TX
Jeffery Willie Gonzales, 32 of Odessa, TX
Omar Padilla-Arrieta, 19 of Odessa, TX
Wendell Mitchell, 37 of Midland, TX
Buddy Monahan, 52 of New Mexico
Cody Rodriguez, 27 of Midland, TX
Alan Dale Warford, 61 of Midland, TX

These are just a few of the names of individuals who have lost their lives this year on the road in our area.