Projo 7 to 7 News Blog

PROVIDENCE -- The woman responsible for the fiery crash that caused the death of 16-year-old Samanatha Beaudette was sentenced today to six years in prison.

Kellie Woodbine, who pleaded no contest to driving while intoxicated, death resulting, and reckless driving, death resulting, received the sentence after telling Superior Court Judge Mark A. Pfeiffer that she would accept any punishment in the hope that it would bring peace to the victims' mother, Sharon Achorn.

"Nothing's going to bring peace to me. My daughter's gone," Achorn said after the sentencing.

Woodbine, 30, committed a crime; she needed to be punished and the sentence was sufficient, Achorn said.

"But there will never be peace. Never," she said.

The crash occurred at 12:40 a.m. Dec. 30, 2005, on the notorious Pawtucket S-curve between Exits 29 and 30 on Route 95.

Woodbine, a functioning alcoholic who told her probation officer she woke up drunk and drunk herself to sleep every day, had a blood alcohol level of three times the legal limit -- when the crash happened. She was traveling 96 mph, had just left a party to pick up cigarettes, and had Beaudette, a pretty former Darlington Braves cheerleader, on the front passenger seat beside her, when she lost control of the borrowed SUV she was driving and struck a bridge abutment.

The car landed on the grassy median, Regine said, and burst into flames.

Beaudette died in Rhode Island Hospital of the injuries she suffered. Woodbine, who was horribly disfigured, has undergone multiple surgeries.

"It's hard to recall a case as horrible as this," Judge Pfeiffer said after Regine displayed photographs of the twisted wreckage, and Woodbine made a personal statement.

"The scars that you see on the outside -- the ones on the inside are worse," she said.

The judge said he believed Woodbine's remorse is genuine: "I do believe you that if you could trade places, you would."

He said he isn't sure whether imposing stiff sentences in drunk driving, death resulting cases, deters others from getting behind the wheel of a car while intoxicated.

But he has a responsibility to take the deterent effect into consideration, Pfeiffer said, and so he felt obligated to disregard defense lawyer Steven DiLibero's request for a 3-year sentence and sentence Woodbine to 15 years in state custody, with 9 years probation and with 6 years to serve.

-- Journal staff writer John Castellucci

 Tags  Providence

Comments

Make the punishment fit the crime said:

The woman may be dead guilty, but face it, her incarceration is going to cost us a quarter of a million dollars. Will it rehabilitate her? Bring back the dead? Avenge the family left behind? Don't we, as a civilized society, have some other way of dealing with these cases? If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Six years of full time community service might be more appropriate. Perhaps a visit to every school, playground, and daycare center in the state from a woman horribly disfigured from a drunk driving accident might get the word out to young people in ways that no radio sound bites ever could. We should give the woman an opportunity to make amends, and five the victim's family a chance to heal. Her incarceration benefits noone.

Link | September 12, 2008 6:03 PM
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