A Victim's Story

On Thursday, July 14, 1994, our son Patrick worked with Kevin Wayne Rintoul bringing in hay. The two boys had just met that day. After a late dinner, Dr. Steward Anderson was driving Patrick and Kevin home when their car was struck by a speeding vehicle that was travelling on the wrong side of the highway and passing several vehicles on a hill. The driver, a 32 year-old father of three was killed instantly.  He was impaired.  Kevin was also killed instantly. Dr. Anderson was critically injured. Patrick, 17, sustained a life-threatening head injury and was air-lifted to London.  He was monitored overnight. The next day we were told that he was clinically brain-dead. His family and friends arrived and said their "good-byes" to an unresponsive young man who had affected so many lives in his short time. Brendan, our older son, helped us make the decision to take his brother and best friend off life-support. We knew Patrick would have wanted any usable organs to be donated for transplant or research. Patrick was removed from life-support on July 15, 1994. We did not have a court case to fight through because the drunk driver who had caused this devastation had died. However, we did have a civil suit that asked each of our family members to prove to the insurance company the quantity and quality of our love for Patrick.

More than seven years after this tragedy, I wake up after dreaming about Patrick as an infant, youngster and young man and try to sort out the dream from reality. Our hearts will ache forever. Patrick's future was stolen from him just as it was taken from all of us. We miss him every day.  In his memory, we continue the fight against the crime of drinking and driving.

Patrick David Magee, 17 and "forever young"