On Monday September 1st around 2a.m, Uriel Palacios got behind the wheel of his friend's car while heavily intoxicated. He borrowed this car because his own required a breathalyzer in order for it to start.
Around the same time that morning, five SMU students were sitting at a red light on their way back from a late night trip to Taco Bell. Less than a second after the student driver accelerated, a tremendous force slammed into the left side of their Tahoe, sending them sliding several feet and igniting the hood of the car with raging flames. Palacios had sped through a red light going near one hundred miles per hour, hit two cars before flipping his own, and left most of the wreckage almost unidentifiable. Two people in one of the cars he hit died and all five SMU students were taken to the hospital, some critically injured.
The news of this wreck is disturbing, but even more apauling is the fact that it could have been prevented. The 22 year old drunk driver was driving on a suspended license, an arrest warrent, had alcohol in his vehicle, and a criminal record with two DWI convictions from 2003 and two DWI felonies from 2007 and 2008 (myfoxdfw.com).
I only wonder what the judge was thinking during the fourth court hearing of this man, and what compelled him or her to give Palacios another chance to straighten up his act, when he clearly had not been able to do so up to that point.
If Palacios had been kept behind bars on his first offense, the lives of so many would not have been put at risk for five years. His reckless and irresponsible behavior was bound to have dire consequences, it is beyond tragic that two people are dead because of him.
The story of this man and accident makes me wonder how many other dangerous drunk driving criminals are still out on the roads because they were given four chances to stop breaking the law. I firmly believe that a person caught driving under the influence or driving while intoxicated should serve jail time without opportunity for bail, and have their license revoked for a year or more. Tragedies like this destroy families across America, and the tolerance for drunk driving offenses should be zero.
