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Published on Friday, December 31, 2004
in the Lakeland Ledger
LAKELAND -- Ronald Lewis took precautions when riding his motorcycle, especially when his wife, Bobbie, was riding with him.
Years of riding had taught him to be careful, and the couple always wore helmets.
None of that mattered the night of March 19, when a drunken driver plowed into the Lewises' Kawasaki on Knights Station Road near Plant City.
The couple were thrown from the motorcycle. Ronald Lewis died, and paramedics rushed his wife to Lakeland Regional Medical Center with life-threatening injuries.
Last week in Hillsborough County, the man who killed Lewis -- Francisco Gonzalez-Mendez, 42, of Lakeland -- pleaded guilty to DUI manslaughter and DUI with serious bodily injury. A judge sentenced him to 17 years in prison.
Lewis, 43, of Thonotosassa was one of hundreds of people killed by drunken drivers in Florida this year.
Drinking and driving is a particular concern during the holiday season, and law enforcement officers will be out in force tonight hoping to prevent intoxicated New Year's Eve revelers from getting behind the wheel.
During the New Year's 2003 weekend alone, 20 people died across Florida in alcohol-related crashes, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.
Of the 116 traffic deaths in Polk County that year, 36, or 31 percent, were alcohol-related.
In 2004, 12 people have died in alcohol-related crashes in Polk, but that number will go up as more investigations are completed. In several of these crashes, the drunken driver was the only fatality.
But any drunken driving death is a preventable tragedy to Karolyn Nunnallee, the former president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
"A lot of people say, `Well, they didn't kill anybody else,' but how a family must grieve over a loved one who has been killed because they did something so very stupid," she said. "The fact is that if they had not been drunk they wouldn't be dead."
Highway Patrol Trooper Larry Coggins Jr. agrees. He said losing even one life to drunken driving is unacceptable.
Coggins said 15 Florida Highway Patrol officers tonight will scout out Interstate 4, State Road 60 and U.S. 27, some of the most dangerous roads in the county.
Unmarked FHP cars used to stop speeders and aggressive drivers will also be used to stop drunken drivers.
"It's one of the most preventable crimes there is because it is always a conscious decision to drink too much and climb behind the wheel," Coggins said.
Gonzalez-Mendez, the Lakeland man who ran into the Lewises' motorcycle, had at least three previous DUI convictions, according to Kim Seace, chief of the Hillsborough State Attorney's Traffic Homicide division.
The night he drove his pickup into the Lewises, his blood-alcohol level registered at 0.21 -- almost three times the 0.08 level at which a person is considered legally drunk in Florida.
The Lewises had been together for 18 years and married for 11.
"I told the judge I lost my husband and my best friend," Bobbie Lewis said.
"Ronnie was the kind of guy, if you met him, you'd remember him. He helped everybody. If he was driving down the street and he saw someone pulled over with their hood up, he'd stop to help them. There were so many people at his funeral they couldn't fit them all in."
But Bobbie Lewis couldn't attend her husband's funeral. She was in surgery at the time.
Months later, she still limps, suffers lingering pain and lacks full use of her right arm.
A civilian assistant with the Florida Highway Patrol, she missed six months of work.
Beyond her physical pain, Lewis said she misses her husband.
"It doesn't get any easier," she said.