I’d like to honor Mr. Robert Wilson, a sixty-four year old father who was driving his blue Suzuki motorcycle on the northbound Capital City Freeway near El Camino Avenue around 10 p.m. on October 24th and was needlessly killed by a driver who thought texting was more important than paying attention to the road. Even worse, Sequoia Monay Jones, the deadly driver was driving on a suspended license and without any insurance. The twenty-three year old plead no contest.

No, that’s not all. After she hit Mr. Wilson, causing him to crash into the road only to be run over and killed by another driver, she left the scene of the crime. It’s a horror story. Horrifying because it was totally unnecessary and avoidable. If you want to get a little madder, imagine the driver barreling down the highway with her head down, texting a friend.

What message, what content could be worth the life of this innocent fellow driver? I don’t even need to get into the fact that she shouldn’t have been on the road at all without a license or insurance. What gets me is the total waste of time and energy for something so meaningless to cause such a careless error and have such a deadly effect. It’s mind-boggling. If you want to stay mad, think about Preston Wilson, Robert’s son.

Preston told Sacramento Superior Court Judge Lawrence G. Brown, “In my mind, he was murdered. An accident is something you stop and help at. That’s killed. Murdered is when you see what happened and drive off. That’s what happened here. The part that makes me mad is this lady is going to get to go home in less than five years, while my kids never get to see their grandfather again.”

Judge Brown offered, “Much has been said about the dangers of text messaging while driving, and yet it persists. This case serves as a tragic precautionary tale. The defendant engaged in reckless and senseless behavior, and now as a result of the incident, a son, a husband, a father, a grandfather, a brother, a brother-in-law, an uncle is dead.”