Using words to heal
Holly Jones uses poetry to help come to terms with the death of her stepmother three years ago on Halloween. Jones’ stepmother was killed by a drunken driver and her brother was left in a coma after the accident. Craig Moore/Daily Inter Lake
By CHERY SABOL
The Daily Inter Lake
It was three years ago that a drunken driver in Evergreen killed a woman who was trick-or-treating with her 11-year-old stepson.
Now, Holly Jones is looking for some healing in speaking out about the injury of her little brother and the death of her stepmother.
Jones was 15. She remembers her brother, Jesse, dressed up like a pirate that night. He was 11, ready for a night of fun with his new stepmother, Danielle Lunak-Jones, 24. She was in a costume, too.
They were walking down Shady Lane at about 7:30 p.m. when a vehicle swerved into the ditch, striking them both. Lunak-Jones died in the ditch in front of Jesse, who was critically hurt.
"A friend of mine said there had been an accident over there on Shady Lane," Jones recalls. Her friend had driven past and knew that Lunak-Jones and Jesse were involved.
Jones' father and Lunak-Jones had married only four months earlier.
"Danielle and I had a good mother-to-daughter relationship," Jones wrote in a poem. "I would follow her wherever she went."
It ended too fast for Jones, who had to deal with her stepmother's death and her brother's severe injuries.
"He had a broken leg. He was in a coma for a month and a half," Jones said.
His recovery has been excruciating, she said.
"He's up and walking around," she said, but it took a year and a half to get to that point.
Jesse is 14 now, she said. Jones is 18. The family is healing, including her father, she said.
The driver who hit Jesse and Lunak-Jones, Justin Mordja, 26, was sentenced for negligent homicide and negligent vehicular assault.
He had left the Rainbow Bar with his fiancee just before the crash. The woman grabbed the steering wheel of his Honda Accord when Mordja drifted off the road while he was removing something from his pocket.
He took back the wheel, overcorrected, and drove into the ditch, striking Lunak-Jones and the boy. His blood-alcohol limit was just over the legal limit of 0.08.
Mordja had no history of drunken driving and cooperated with officials. He made no excuses for what he did.
Sentenced in August 2004, Mordja was given 15 years with 10 suspended for negligent homicide and 10 years with 10 suspended. He's out of prison on parole now.
"It's a tragedy all the way around," prosecuting Deputy County Attorney Katie Schulz said at the time.
Jones thinks so, too.
She wrote a poem as a kind of catharsis for her sorrow.
"I've been keeping all this inside since it happened," she said. "It helped quite a bit to put it out on paper."
And so she hopes the message will help others when she says:
"I've been searching for what I've lost when you took her away. I am so close and yet so far to finding what has been gone for almost three years.
"Don't be stupid and drink and drive. You do not know where you will end up or whose life you will take…
"Live life to the fullest 'cause you do not know what could happen to you."