Cambridge Family Makes Plea To End Perils Of Drunk Driving
ST. PAUL, Minn. (WCCO) -- A Cambridge mother is making an emotional plea against drinking and driving drunk.
And she's speaking personally about a crash in November 2015 that caused her young family months of recovery and painful rehabilitation.
Look into the sweet little face of Havana Bodell and you'll feel the family's pain. An innocent child who was forever changed by the selfish choice of a drunk driver.
"I was trapped in the car and unable to comfort my screaming children," Erica Bodell, her mother, said.
Erica Bodell fought back tears recounting the November crash. Her face was smashed and both legs broken, pinned behind the driver's seat. Her three children, ages 10, 6 and 3, suffered from skull vertebrae and hip fractures.
The family was coming home from an afternoon of bowling when 24-year-old Brandon Rossmeisl missed a curve and crashed head on into Bodell and her kids. His blood alcohol was more than twice the legal limit.
"Every day, we have to deal with the sadness, anger and frustration on how someone else's choice to drink and drive changed our lives forever," Erica said.
In advance of a planned "end of summer" DWI enforcement crackdown, the Department of Public Safety and Gillette Children's Specialty Healthcare spoke of the human cost of drunk driving. Like the intense therapies required to mend fragile bodies back together again.
Consider that driving drunk will cause one in every four highway deaths in Minnesota each year – not to mention the average of 253 life-changing injuries, like those experienced by the Bodell children.
"Nothing is more frustrating than the fact that crashes such as this are absolutely so preventable," Col. Matt Langer with the Minnesota State Patrol said.
The children endured months of rehabilitation at Gillette Children's, but the worst was leaving Havana alone in the hospital after family visits.
Wiping away tears, Erica Bodell recounts, "She would cry and beg and plead for us to stay just five more minutes."
According to the Department of Public Safety 27,000 people were arrested in 2015 for driving under the influence. That equates to 74 drunk drivers each day being taken off Minnesota roads. A number that is likely sparing other families from suffering the same heartbreaking fate as the Bodell's.
