June 19th, 2009 is a day Sirena Speed will never forget.
"I had found out Nathan had been killed by a drunk driver. He was walking down the road when the guy hit him and drove off," Speed, the sister of Nathan Spataro, said.
The intoxicated driver was reportedly at a bar before striking her 21-year-old brother Nathan outside of Sulphur Springs. After it happened, the driver didn't immediately tell anyone, leaving Nathan alone on the road.
Sirena still thinks of him everyday. "He was a very outgoing, nice, will give you the shirt off his back kind of guy," Speed said.
The offender received 10 years in prison for his crime that caused a lifetime of pain."Our lives will never be the same again," Speed said.
Local MADD advocates say this tragedy is 100 percent preventable by planning ahead.
"We certainly want people to have a great weekend and a wonderful holiday, but always make sure you have that safe ride home," Leslie Watson, Executive Director of MADD, said.
According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, teens account for almost 10 percent of fatalities on the 4th, with alcohol taking a backseat to another problem. "I sit beside people and see them on their phones on top of their steering wheels texting and driving everyday," Chip Crist, with Allstate Insurance, said.
Local law enforcement will have more officers on the roads to put the brakes on these dangerous behaviors, concentrating on high-risk areas."There's a lot of alcohol consumption around the 4th of July holiday,and so we want to make sure we specifically target areas where we have higher crash rates," Jeanne Dark, a spokesperson for DPS, said.
Take it from the Speed family, who refuse to let what happened to Nathan be ignored. "We're going to keep doing our thing, keep fighting and getting the word out. Don't drink and drive," Speed said.
