WI - Sandra Donat for child endangerment, Schofield, 2003

Casshew

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Sandra Donat had been arrested three times already for drunken driving, so she knew that she would need someone sober to blow into the ignition-lock device on her van before it would start.

She chose her 12-year-old son.

Then Donat piled him and four of her other children - all younger than 10 years old at the time - into the vehicle at 2:30 a.m. on Feb. 20, 2003, and took off for Taco Bell with a beer in hand.

Police arrested her after the van drifted out of its lane, and found that she had a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.22, more than twice the state's legal limit at the time.

Donat said she had left a friend's house in Wausau, but police never determined where she was coming from. The officer who followed the van into the restaurant's parking lot on Grand Avenue in Schofield could see that at least one of the children was not wearing a seat belt.

"The nature of this crime is grotesque," Assistant District Attorney Kurt Klomberg said while arguing for a prison sentence at a hearing on Thursday in Marathon County court. "Those lives could have ended because their mother, the person they trusted the most, had the munchies."
Reserve Judge Conrad Richards agreed. He sentenced Donat, 38, of Birnamwood to the maximum sentence of four and a half years in prison, along with another year and a half of extended supervision for three counts of fourth-offense driving while intoxicated - prosecutors can add additional charges of drunken driving for each child who is in the vehicle.

Both the prosecutor and the judge said that other than cases involving a fatal crash, it was the most serious drunken-driving incident that has crossed their desks.

http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/wdhlocal/283243560984945.shtml
 
My mother was killed by a drunk driver when I was just 11 years old. Stuff like this just makes me sick! Too bad she couldn't have gotten even more jail time for that. :mad:
 
mommyd said:
My mother was killed by a drunk driver when I was just 11 years old. Stuff like this just makes me sick! Too bad she couldn't have gotten even more jail time for that. :mad:

I'm so sorry to hear that MommyD! It is a shame that even with the crackdowns on drunk driving, it still happens way too frequently in our world.
 
mommyd said:
My mother was killed by a drunk driver when I was just 11 years old. Stuff like this just makes me sick! Too bad she couldn't have gotten even more jail time for that. :mad:
Mommyd,
When I was 11 my father was killed in a drunk driving accident. But he was the one who was drunk. Another person was also killed and one injured. It was Thanksgiving Day. My parents were divorced at that time. He had been to the Horse Races. Back then everyone thought how tragic for a man so young and with young children to get killed in an auto accident. TODAY he would be a murderer. IT was a very weird feeling when as an adult I realized what my father had done. Just wanted to share.
I can't even find the words to describe the contempt I have for this woman. Those four children, what is going to happen to them?
 
I am very sorry that you also lost a parent so young. Drunk Driving is a horrible thing for all those involved.

This woman just makes me sick because she cares about her drinking and herself more than she cares about her precious children. :(
 

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