What happened to Tiffany Young is a criminal tragedy: the Purdue basketball
player was
killed by a drunk driver in Gary Indiana. He was driving with three times
the legal limit (in Indiana) of alcohol in his system, and as so often seems to
be the case, he suffered minor injuries while Young was killed and her boyfriend
was seriously injured.
Many of us, this writer included, have had people close to us injured by
drunk drivers. It's altogether appropriate the the charges now extend as
high as murder. With luck, this driver will never see the inside of a car
again. There is a very sad case in Raleigh of a young woman, 23, who
killed two people while driving drunk and was given a brief sentence and
probation. She has violated her probation twice by drinking outside her home and
so is off to jail to serve the rest of her time. There is truth to the
argument that this is an addiction and a disease, which is true, but other
diseases like cancer or heart disease don't often kill other people as well. If
people can't control their drinking, the rest of us will have to take measures
to address it for them, and we'd be stupid not to, actually. All sympathies to
the Young family. They did nothing to justify having their child killed.