No jail for first-time DUI would add insult to injury, Beach victims say

Editor's note: The beginning of this story indicates that Dorek Emanuel Hayes struck a Virginia Beach woman. He has been charged with drunken driving and hit-and-run with injuries, among others, but he has not been convicted of any of them in the December incident. Hayes is scheduled for trial June 14.

VIRGINIA BEACH

It's been 3-1/2 months since a man with a previous DUI conviction was charged with striking Mary Edwards while she walked home from a shopping center in December.

The impact broke her legs and ankles, dislocated her left elbow, smashed her left shoulder, cracked her ribs, bruised her lungs and knocked out several of her teeth. The injuries have left the 73-year-old woman bedridden.

And it all may have been avoided had the driver, who pleaded guilty to drunken driving three years earlier, faced harsher consequences after his first DUI, said her husband, Francis Edwards.

"If they had put this guy in jail the first time, there may not have been a second time, and we wouldn't be sitting here looking at her like this," he said, standing by his wife's bedside at the Bayside Healthcare and Rehab Center. "This is a result of that policy."

Under a bill passed by the House of Delegates last month, jail time would've been taken off the table for some misdemeanor offenses, such as first-time drunken driving, in order to save money on court-appointed attorneys for indigent defendants.

But the bill didn't pass the Senate before the legislative session ended. Francis Edwards said he was grateful.

The bill's proposal was insulting, Edwards, 73, said.

"When I saw that, I just saw red," he said. "I think we are too lenient with our criminal justice system."

Prosecutors still have the option of not pursuing jail time for some offenses.

Dorek Emanuel Hayes, the man accused of hitting Mary Edwards, is scheduled for trial June 14. He's been charged with drunken driving twice within a five-year period, maiming, refusing to take a blood or breath test, and hit-and-run with injuries.

If he's convicted, he'll face a mandatory 20-day jail sentence for the second DUI charge. The maiming charge is punishable by up to five years in prison and a $2,500 fine.

In September 2006, Hayes pleaded guilty to drunken driving and was sentenced to 60 days in jail, with all of the time suspended, according to court records. He was put on two years of unsupervised probation and ordered to pay a $350 fine and participate in an alcohol-safety program.

Mary Edwards said she was walking home from browsing the shops at Haygood Shopping Center the evening of Dec. 30 when she was struck from behind by the Mitsubishi Eclipse that police say Hayes was driving.

"I was walking home and a car hit me," she said. "I didn't really see much."

Several weeks later, she woke up in the hospital, unable to walk, eat or breathe on her own. She still has a feeding tube.

Police arrested Hayes, 29, about a block away from the crash site after he drove into a parked van. Inside the car, they found several empty and unopened bottles of alcohol, according to Circuit Court records. He was released Jan. 6 on $7,500 bond.

Francis Edwards said Hayes' insurance is helping to pay for his wife's medical care. They thought about suing him but didn't think it would be worth the trouble. Hayes is unemployed and lives with his father, according to court records.

At the Bayside Healthcare and Rehab Center, around the corner from where she was struck, Mary Edwards hopes to relearn how to walk and use her left hand, which is clenched in a fist.

"It is terrible being sick," she said. "I just wish this hadn't happened."

She probably won't be able to testify at Hayes' trial in June, but Francis Edwards said he'll be there. He said employees at the Haygood shops still ask how his wife is doing.

"They want to see her back out there pushing her shopping cart."

Kathy Adams, (757) 222-5155, kathy.adams@pilotonline.com