NEOSHO, Mo. (AP) - As the sun set over Neosho on a recent evening, Stacey Stevens placed silk flowers into the wreath that stands at the intersection of Missouri Highway 59 and Malcolm Mosby Drive. Next to the wreath stands a white cross bearing her son’s name.
It was Stevens’ first time back at the intersection where her son’s body was found on a Saturday morning last September, following an alleged hit-and-run accident.
“I miss my son every day - every second of every day - but he’s not going to have died in vain,” she said.
Since the death of 19-year-old Matthew Brooks Stevens, his mother has been advocating tougher punishments for those convicted of leaving the scene of an accident that results in serious injury or death.
She started a petition on Change.org that has gained more than 130,000 supporters so far. She’s reached out to a Missouri legislator about changing the law. She’s talked to an attorney about drawing up a proposal for a bill.
“There’s a certain amount of healing in this for me, to know that I’m doing this to honor my son and to help other people,” said Stevens, a licensed clinical social worker. “That’s what I went to school for … to advocate and help other people.
“I just didn’t realize that I was going to do it this way, but I’m ready.”
It was about 5 a.m. on Sept. 12 when Stacey Stevens got the call. Matthew’s father broke the news: There had been an accident, her son was dead.
“There was nothing I could do, and that was the most helpless feeling in the world,” she said.
The Joplin Globe (https://bit.ly/1OIebCK ) reports that a few hours earlier, authorities had arrived at the intersection to find the body of Matthew Brooks Stevens lying in the road, apparently hit by a vehicle, but no one had reported such an accident. An autopsy would show that his injuries were the result of being struck from behind by a vehicle, according to police. He was killed instantly, his mother said.
Matthew, a 2014 Neosho High School graduate, had lived in Neosho since 2008. In March 2015, Stacey Stevens started splitting her time between Neosho and Bentonville, Arkansas, where she now lives full time.
She wanted Matthew to move to Bentonville with her, but he decided to stay. Neosho was his home, and he wanted to be where his friends lived. His Asperger’s syndrome made transitions difficult for him, she said. Matthew spent much of his time staying with friends.
Not long before the accident, he told his mother that he was trying to enroll at Crowder College and was thinking about living in campus housing. He’d struck up a deal with his mom to start looking at Job Corps if he didn’t enroll in college or find a job soon. A friend was trying to help him get a job at Wendy’s. He also had a girlfriend.
“He was looking forward to a future,” Stevens said. “He was looking forward to, ’Hey, I’m going to start college.’ He should have been starting college now.”
The night he was killed, Matthew had been walking into town after seeing his girlfriend, who lived in Crowder student housing, she said.
Following the accident, Matthew’s family was out in force putting out fliers and urging people to come forward with information. Almost two weeks later, Neosho police announced that investigators had seized a 2001 Ford Escape with extensive front-end damage.
Sixty-one-year-old Oren R. Rinehart, of Neosho, was charged with a felony count of leaving the scene of an accident. According to a probable-cause statement, Rinehart allegedly admitted to hitting Matthew Stevens on his way home, but told investigators he thought he hit a deer, and so he continued on. He later turned himself in to authorities, according to the probable-cause statement.
Multiple messages left for Rinehart at work and with his attorney to get their version of events, and the explanation for why Rinehart turned himself in, were not returned.
A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Feb. 1.
Under Missouri law, leaving the scene of an accident is a class D felony if the accident results in physical injury to another person or causes more than $1,000 in property damage. Otherwise, leaving the scene of an accident is a misdemeanor.
A class D felony is currently the lowest level of felony in Missouri, and a conviction carries a punishment of up to four years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000 or a combination of those, said Newton County Prosecuting Attorney Jake Skouby.
New laws taking effect in 2017 will change some of the language in the statute, but if the accident results in physical injury, the maximum amount of time a person could spend in prison if he or she is convicted of leaving the scene would still be four years.
A charge of leaving the scene deals specifically with the act of leaving the site, but not with any evidence that might exist as to how and why the accident happened, Skouby said. He said authorities still don’t know the circumstances surrounding Matthew’s death, he said.
In that case, Rinehart was charged with leaving the scene of the accident because it’s the only charge there is any evidence to prosecute, Skouby said. Neosho police have investigated the incident, but Skouby said there is no other evidence that has come before him to indicate anything other than that Rinehart said he was driving the vehicle when Matthew Stevens was hit.
As the investigation into her son’s death began, Stevens started learning more about the law, and was upset by what she found.
“It cost me $10,000 to bury my child. And four years in prison, really? You took a life,” she said. “What I don’t understand about our laws, as a mother … if you run somebody over with a car, how is that any less of a deadly weapon than if you were to use a knife or a gun or anything else like that?”
She also is frustrated that the burden of proof is on the state to show whether a driver involved in a hit-and-run was impaired in some way, and said that creates an incentive for drivers who are under the influence of drugs or alcohol, for example, to leave the scene of an accident and report it only after they are sober.
Even if prosecutors can prove someone involved in an accident was intoxicated, they also have to prove whether the individual was acting recklessly, Skouby said, though if someone was intoxicated and involved in an accident, there’s a good chance evidence will rise to that level. In that case, the individual can be charged with second-degree (vehicular) assault or first-degree involuntary manslaughter, which carries the possibility of a longer prison sentence. Involuntary manslaughter currently can be a Class B felony, with a possible sentence of up to 15 years, if a drunken driver kills a person who is not in his or her vehicle.
Stevens wants to see the law changed to enforce a 7- to 15-year sentence if an individual is convicted of leaving the scene of an accident involving serious injury and a 15- to 25-year sentence if the accident causes a death. She also wants to see the burden of proof that the driver was not impaired placed on the defendant, not the victim.
“I’m saying that anything that has to do with a serious bodily injury or death, we need to be more harsh with,” she said. “We need to send a very clear message: This is not OK. We need to make it where it is not more rewarding to flee the scene, and that’s what we’re doing.”
Skouby, the prosecuting attorney, said he can see Stevens’ point. And he can see why she’s upset with the law - a conviction of leaving the scene has the same punishment when a death is involved as for an accident involving $1,000 in property damage.
“I could certainly understand her argument that a dead person is more serious than simple property damage,” he said. “It makes sense when you think of it that way.”
He likened the issue to shooting toward a crowd - if the bullet lands in a tree, the shooter might be charged with unlawful use of a weapon, but if the bullet hits someone, the charge can be much more severe. The argument can be made, he said, that the consequences of an action should determine the punishment.
He said that, generally speaking, he’d support stronger punishment for leaving the scene of an accident if that accident resulted in a serious consequence such as a death.
“When the consequences are stiff, people have more incentive to follow the law, and certainly we want people to have incentive to contact emergency personnel when someone’s injured,” Skouby said.
Republican state Rep. Bill White said he could see circumstances where leaving-the-scene laws could be tightened, but they weren’t necessarily aligned with Stevens’ desire.
White, who is a licensed attorney, said one avenue might be to stiffen punishments if by leaving the scene of the accident the driver exacerbates an injury or causes death, such as if someone dies because they didn’t receive treatment for his or her injuries.
However, if a person involved in a hit-and-run dies on impact - as is believed to be case with Stevens - then the driver’s leaving the scene would not change the outcome of the accident, and he didn’t think he would push for stiffer punishments in that case. There are a number of circumstances that could come into play when someone is involved in a hit-and-run accident, including an instance where the driver who was being safe, following the law, and couldn’t avoid the crash.
White also said he thinks the four-year prison sentence is a big incentive for people to follow the law. If there is evidence that a person was being negligent, then there are avenues for prosecutors to bring more serious charges against a person, he said.
Ed Hershewe, an attorney who specializes in personal injury and wrongful death litigation, said he thought the punishments built into leaving-the-scene laws were appropriate because the charge has to do with someone being involved in an accident and not reporting it, not with underlying behaviors such as driving recklessly.
Just because someone was involved in an accident that involved an injury, death or property damage doesn’t prove that the individual caused those things, he said. All the individual is being charged with is leaving the scene.
“It’s a pretty strict statute,” Hershewe said. “You’re driving a car; you’re involved in an accident; you don’t report it - end of story.”
The state has the burden of proof to show that the driver was doing something to merit other charges because individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty, he said, and the burden is on the state to prove a defendant guilty.
“And that goes even for an offense like a traffic felony,” he said.
Republican state Rep. Bill Reiboldt also has been in touch with Stevens and said he has been talking with people on all sides of the issue.
Ultimately, lawmakers will have to decide what sort of support exists to change laws governing accidents when someone has left the scene.
“There’s just a lot of things involved here, but we’re looking at all sides, and we’re seeing if there’s anything that I can do to be of help to move this forward,” he said.
As part of her effort to change the law, Stevens started a Change.org petition that has so far received more than 133,000 supporters from across the United States, some with stories about how they have been affected by hit-and-run accidents.
Stevens knows that she can’t control what happens with the charges filed in her son’s death, and nothing that happens now will affect that, but if the changes she wants to see help another family, then she said her son didn’t die in vain.
“It’s bigger than me,” she said. “This isn’t just about my son and me being a mother who is hurt because she lost her child. This is about doing what the right thing is, and the right thing is to advocate for these families for a better law for protection for victims.”
She also has set up a scholarship fund in her son’s name, and said she’d like to use the money to help send a high school senior on the autism spectrum to college.
At some point, she said she’d also like to start advocating for tighter hit-and-run laws in other states. And eventually, she’d like to start a foundation to advocate for hit-and-run victims and their families.
“People are reaching out to me and saying, ’We’ve been affected by this, and this isn’t right,’ and they’re not seeing any justice for their loved ones, and I think they’re reaching out to me, people are saying, ’We’re behind you, we support you, we are in your corner, we agree with this, this has got to change,’” she said.
“So I start in Missouri, and then I start going to all the states around me, I start small and think big.”
Stacey Stevens has started a Change.org petition to advocate for stronger hit-and-run laws in Missouri. The petition can be found by searching “Strengthen Hit and Run Laws in Missouri” on the website.
She has also set up a scholarship fund in honor of her son. Donations can be made at Arvest Bank.
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Information from: The Joplin (Mo.) Globe, https://www.joplinglobe.com
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