Drunk driving is no accident

Jason DeShazer doesn’t believe in drunk driving “accidents.” His own wreck in 2006 was no accident.

After work in October 2006, he told Columbia Falls High School students last week, he went to a bar, drank heavily, closed the place down, drove home and had friends over where they drank more, smoked pot and did cocaine until the early morning hours.

Then he drove to work, blacked out on Highway 82 between Somers and Bigfork, crossed the centerline at 70 mph and killed 27-year-old Dawn Bowker, a Somers school teacher. The wreck was so violent her vehicle was almost unrecognizable.

DeShazer, a 22-year-old Bigfork native at the time, was almost killed himself and suffered 52 broken bones in his face.

He was convicted of negligent homicide and sentenced to 20 years in the Montana State Prison, with 10 suspended. He was paroled after serving 3 1/2 years. Now he’s 29. Does he deserve to be out? No, he says.

“The accident happened seven years ago this week,” he told the students on Nov. 1 during Red Ribbon Week.

Bowker had spent the three days prior to the wreck talking to her class about the perils of drug and alcohol abuse — that’s what educators do during Red Ribbon Week —but on the fourth day…

“I killed her. Violently,” DeShazer said. “I robbed her of having children. Getting married.”

DeShazer said there was no accident. He chose to abuse drugs and alcohol. He started in high school, the son of a 15-year-old mother who was a heroin addict and couldn’t take care of him.

He ended up in foster care and then living with his grandparents in Bigfork. He got involved in sports, was a wrestler and football player, but there was always an excuse for a party, a reason to drink and smoke pot. But he made those choices and he doesn’t blame his past or others.

“We over focus on the present,” he said. “Sacrifice the future.”

The morning he killed Bowker, he said, he made horrible choices, but it was no accident.

“I didn’t accidentally use drugs. I didn’t accidentally drink. I didn’t accidentally get in the truck,” he said. “I made choices. There’s no accident in any of this.”

It was a completely preventable death. And that is why today he hates drinking and driving.

In prison, he lived in a cramped cell, 23 hours a day, with one hour outside if the guards were up to it. Freedom comes into perspective when you’re in there, he said.

“The price of freedom is responsibility,” he told the students.

DeShazer remains under supervision by the Department of Correction until 2027. He has a job as an addiction counselor technician in Butte and is studying mechanical engineering at Montana Tech.

The state gave him back his driver’s license last year, but his vehicle is rigged with a device that he must blow into to check for alcohol before it will start.

DeShazer knows he is blessed.

“I gave Dawn a life sentence,” he said.

His years in prison don’t come close to that.

“Life is a gift. It’s a privilege,” he said.

DeShazer recalled being at a company function not long ago. People were drinking and getting loose. He was sipping a Pepsi. Two women asked him why he wasn’t drinking.

“Because I’m cool like that,” he said.

He said he’s going to have that slogan put on a T-shirt. It’s the corniest thing he’s ever said, he admits. But it’s true.