Woman raising her late son's children is fighting to make drunk drivers pay child support
A woman who is raising her grandchildren after losing her son in a car crash caused by a drunk driver is now making it her mission to make the drivers responsible pay child support.
Cecilia Williams and her family were left devastated in April 2021 when her son Cordell, his fiancé Lacey, and their four-month-old son Cordell II were killed in a horrific road incident.
The grandmother was, as a result, made the legal guardian of her son's two other children - Bentley, five, and Mason, three.
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David Thurby, who was driving the other vehicle, was later charged with three counts of DUI death of another after his blood alcohol was allegedly twice the legal limit, CBS reports.
While raising her late son and daughter-in-law's children, and working to keep their memory alive, Cecilia is now working to get a new law passed in every US state to hold drunk drivers accountable for the families they destroy.
Bentley's Law - named after her eldest grandson - is a proposal that would require offenders to pay child support for the surviving children when a parent is killed in a drunk-driving crash - one top of serving their jail sentence.
"Some people love money more than they do life. So the way to teach a person and to prevent them from becoming a repeat offender and putting another family through this was to create something where they will have to pay", she told People.
"I want offenders to see how families truly suffer, how their actions affect everybody."
After tirelessly campaigning for months, Cecilia has seen some success. While Tennessee has already passed a bill modelled on Bentley's Law earlier this year, similar bills are now also being drafted and filed in Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Virginia.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a total of 38,824 lives were lost to traffic crashes in the US in 2020. That's the highest number of traffic-related fatalities since 2007.
According to the US Department of Transportation, approximately 28 people in the US die in drunk-driving crashes every day.
Recalling the day that a state trooper came to her house to break the news about her son, daughter-in-law, and grandson, she said: "I remember screaming, screaming, screaming. It's been hell ever since."
Since that day, Cecilia has been caring for her grandsons and, although the experience has been 'a lot', the children are 'what keeps [her] going'.
She said: "We want to show the boys that something good can come out of bad. Otherwise all they will know is tragedy."
Cecilia has set up a GoFundMe page to support her mission to make Bentley's Law a nationwide bill.
You can check it out here.
Ali Condon