Change DUI law to prevent tragedy

Deana’s Law would increase the penalties for multiple DUI convictions and high bloodalcohol content levels.

The wheels of justice are starting to slow down for Roseann and Richard DeRosa. The pain is not.

Justice is being delivered for their daughter, Deana Eckman, a vivacious 45-year-old who was killed in a senseless act, a clearly impaired driver who flouted the law and got behind the wheel, despite the fact that his driving privileges had been suspended from the latest in a string of DUI charges.

The DeRosas were in court last Thursday facing a reminder of what they lost when David Strowhouer jumped into a truck and headed toward Chester, putting him on a collision course with a car carrying Deana Eckman, driven by her husband.

Strowhouer veered into the left-hand passing lane in an attempt to go by another vehicle, smashing head-on with the Eckmans’ vehicle. Deana was killed instantly. Her husband, Chris, suffered serious injuries and continues to recover.

Strowhouer pleaded guilty to charges of homicide by vehicle while driving under the influence, murder of the third degree, two counts of aggravated assault, accidents involving death or injury, DUI and driving with a suspended license.

He will be sentenced by Delaware County Judge Mary Alice Brennan Nov. 14.

But justice will not bring back the DeRosas’ daughter.

True justice would involve measures that insure that this kind of horror – inflicted by a person with a history of driving under the influence – never happens again.

That is now the DeRosas’ mission.

Strowhouer had five previous DUI offenses. He was on probation for the fifth offense at the time of the latest incident. Strowhouer pleaded guilty to his third and fourth DUI offenses in Chester County in October 2017 and was sentenced to 18 to 36 years in prison. Later that same month he entered a guilty plea to his fifth DUI offense in Delaware County. Brennan allowed his sentence to run concurrently with the time he was doing in Chester County, as opposed to consecutively.

Strowhouer was granted parole despite five DUI offenses, a fact that continues to haunt the DeRosas.

And it is in their daughter’s name that they are vowing to spare another family from a similar ordeal.

Deana’s Law, which is being proposed by state Sen. Tom Killion, R-9 of Delaware County, would substantially increase the penalties for drivers with multiple DUI convictions and those offenders found to have exceedingly high blood-alcohol content levels.

In the case of repeat DUI drivers, especially those involved in accidents and with high blood-alcohol levels, a new state law now toughens the penalties for offenders, including a mandatory minimum sentence of seven years in prison for someone who gets behind the wheel while impaired and then kills someone.

Strowhouer is charged under the new statute.

Killion and the DeRosas have teamed to move to the next facet of the law, exploring what can be done to keep these ticking time bombs off the road, not just beefing up penalties after the kind of tragedy that now haunts the DeRosas.

If nothing else, the Strowhouer case reinforces something law enforcement knows all too well: If someone wants to get behind the wheel, currently there is little to stop them.

Killion and the DeRosas want to explore technology that would immobilize a vehicle when it detects the driver is over the legal threshold of 0.08 blood-alcohol content that constitutes a DUI violation in Pennsylvania. DeRosa suggested Pennsylvania lead the way in requiring every vehicle be equipped with such devices by the year 2025.

Another possibility is something called a SCRAM bracelet. The device is currently being used in York and Lancaster counties and can instantly alert law enforcement and probation and parole officers when the person wearing the device consumes alcohol.

“Our DUI laws must change. Deana wasn’t the first to lose her life and, unfortunately, she won’t be the last,” Roseann DeRosa told a panel Killion hosted after the accident that killed Deana.

David Strowhouer will be going to prison for a long time.

In a way, it is justice for the DeRosas and Deana Eckman.

But true justice would have prevented this tragedy from occurring in the first place.

And now, the DeRosas are trying to make that happen to spare other families the pain that they in fact endure every day.