An Indiana man was apparently having some kind of car trouble this past Saturday evening. As he tried to push his vehicle to the side of the street, he was struck by an oncoming car around 9 p.m.
Law enforcement officials said the driver did not stop to see if she could help the 23-year-old she had just hit. Instead, she drove off into the night, leaving him to die on an Indianapolis street. Police said the driver was later located and charged with both drunken driving and fleeing the scene of a fatal accident.
According to a news report, the man was pronounced dead at the scene of the crash.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says drunken drivers take the lives of 28 Americans per day. That means there is a fatality in a motor vehicle crash involving an impaired driver every 53 minutes of every day.
The CDC says there were 9,967 people killed in car accidents involving alcohol in 2014; that is about one-third of all traffic deaths in the U.S. that year.
Drunken drivers hit hard at our most vulnerable citizens, killing more than two hundred children (up to age 14) in 2014. More than half of those kids were passengers in vehicles driven by someone impaired by alcohol, the CDC says.
The families that lose loved ones to impaired drivers can never undo the damage done, but they can hold those responsible for the tragedies fully accountable. With the help of an experienced attorney, a drunken driver can be made to pay for a life destroyed.