WESTFIELD – The untimely – and unnecessary – death of a local girl has brought grief to her family but they are working to honor her memory with positive responses to their tragedy.
Evan Bard, 20, died in a Canton car crash on May 10, 2013, when her intoxicated former boyfriend smashed the car he was using to drive her home from a wedding.
Sean E. Jackman, 25, of Stoughton, pleaded guilty to one charge of vehicular homicide while operating under the influence of liquor recently and was sentenced to a three to five year term in state prison.
Bard’s father, Todd, grew up in the Birch Bluffs neighborhood of the city and, although currently an Agawam resident, has strong ties to his hometown, where much of his family remains.
He said recently that “the issue is what do you do after you go through this sort of tragedy” and, for him, the answer is to work to make them avoidable, in part by making the consequences of such crashes severe enough to “ scare enough people not to want to drink and drive.”
He said that currently in Massachusetts “the laws are quite lenient” so “you can get off in one or two years if you severely injure or kill somebody.”
He said that, in his family’s experience, the person responsible for their loss was so clearly at fault that he did receive a significant sentence but said that currently “a lot of these good defense lawyers know how to beat the system” by taking advantage of loopholes or minor mistakes made by law enforcement officials.
He said that currently juries are not allowed to know about a defendant’s criminal history.
“To me it is sort of insanity that somebody has eight, nine, ten OUIs and, thankfully, no one’s gotten killed but, it’s going to happen” he said and pointed out that when somebody responsible for a drunken accident is charged, the jury is not allowed to know about similar previous infractions
As a result, he has been spending a lot of time talking with others to make changes in the law “to make it harder for these defense lawyers to squeeze every piece of the law and get around through those loopholes.”
Bard has established the EvvGirl Foundation which has as one of its goals changing the laws but also has two other avenues to combat the problem of drunken driving in his daughter’s honor.
He said that the foundation has recently initiated an education program to encourage conscientious persons to ‘Seize the Keys’ of potential drunk drivers.
He said that his family’s tragedy could have been prevented at the wedding where Jackman “was drinking heavily all night” if somebody had seized his keys before he drove away.
He said that although the bride asked him repeatedly if he was driving, nobody intervened when he got into his father’s car to drive away.
“If somebody had seized his keys that night we wouldn’t be in this predicament,” Bard said.
He said that persons who see an impaired person should intervene and the EvvGirl initiative to “seize the keys” is planned to be an educational program to help persons learn how to intervene before a potentially dangerous driver takes to the roads.
Bard said that a foundation goal is “to make a CD with video and testimony that could be powerful and impactful” to be used in prevention programs in schools.
The other primary purpose of the foundation is to honor his daughter’s dream to be a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit nurse, Bard said.
He said that she had been in her last year at a nursing program at Curry College and that her goal was to work in such a unit.
In her honor, Bard said, the foundation has provided cameras which have been installed in two hospital NICUs.
The cameras make it possible for family members to view, via a secure Internet connection, infants while they are under the care of a NICU.
He said that, with help from the EvvGirl Foundation and a Worcester Rotary Club, six cameras have been installed in the UMass Memorial Hospital in Worcester.
He said six more were installed in the NICU at Baystate Children’s Hospital and said “our goal is to put a webcam in every NICU hospital in New England.”
He said there are about 26 such hospitals in New England, so 800-1,000 web cams are needed. At about $2,500 each, “that is $2-2.5 million we have to raise,” he said.
He said that he has presented his plan to all but nine of the NICU hospitals in New England and “they absolutely love it.”
Bard said that the foundation has no fundraising events currently scheduled but said that the next event planned will be an exhibition hockey game with the Blue and Gold Legends of the Boston Bruins.
He said the venue has not been finalized but said it will either be at Amelia Park or at a Boston area arena near Curry College.
