Deshazer gets 10 years for traffic death

Jason Deshazer was sentenced Thursday to 10 years in the Montana State Prison for the traffic death last fall of Dawn Bowker.

Thursday's sentencing in District Judge Stewart Stadler's courtroom on the negligent homicide charge came six months to the day since the Oct. 26 crash on Montana 82.

That is when Deshazer's vehicle crossed the center line and slammed head-on into Bowker's. Both were going to work that morning - Bowker, 27, to teach sixth-graders at Somers Middle School, and Deshazer, now 23, to a rock works company.

"Not one person in this courtroom wants to be here today," Stadler told Deshazer as he handed down the 20-year sentence, with 10 years suspended.

He will be eligible for parole in 2 1/2 years, but only if he successfully completes a substance-abuse treatment program by then.

County Attorney Ed Corrigan's sentencing recommendation mirrored Stadler's decision. Deshazer's attorney, Patrick Sherlock, had asked for his client's time to be served in the state Department of Corrections system to allow more flexibility with where he is placed.

The judge admonished Deshazer that his victims include the Bowker family and Deshazer's own family.

"The harm done is without equal," Stadler said. "You killed a person."

Deshazer had alcohol, cocaine and TCP, the active chemical in marijuana, in his system at the time of the crash. He has said he got little sleep the night before because he was partying with friends.

Last week, Deshazer admitted he had violated terms of his release by using alcohol, so his $75,000 bail was revoked, and he has been in jail since then.

Several members of Bowker's family and friends took the stand Thursday, each expressing their forgiveness for Deshazer but speaking of their loss.

"Not a day goes by that I don't miss my sister," said Mark Bowker, 31, of Monument, Colo. He said she would want the family to show compassion.

"She would be the first person to forgive you, Mr. Deshazer," he said. But he did ask for prison time as "sort of a wake-up call."

"I plan to communicate with you in jail," Mark Bowker said. "Whether I asked for it or not, you're now a part of my family … You are the only person who can make changes in your life."

Joshua Bowker, who shared a house in Bigfork with his sister and their mother, Irene Bowker, followed his brother.

"Some days you think of the things you just want to go do [together], and you can't," he said. "But I know she's in heaven."

He told Deshazer that length of prison time is irrelevant unless his life takes a turn.

"I just want you to change your life. That's what you need to do, man," Joshua Bower said. "You need to change your life and ask God for help."

Dawn's father, Dean Bowker of Missoula, recalled the last time he talked with his daughter - four days before her death, when she made plans to come celebrate his 65th birthday with him the next week. His son was the one to tell their father she never would be coming.

"I, as her father, have forgiven you," he told Deshazer. "I forgave you the very first day. You can call me at any time, Jason. I want you to know that."

He asked for a long enough prison term to send a message to others and to let Deshazer turn his life around.

"Jason, Dawn doesn't have a chance to resurrect her life. But you do," Dean Bowker said. "I do not want another family to have to go through what we have gone through."

Irene Bowker asked those with daughters to think of their ability to go see them, to call them on the phone.

"I don't have that privilege any more," she said. "But I do hope and pray that you have come to the end of your rope and see now that you can't drink and you can't do drugs and you can't drive, because you don't know what you are doing," she said.

Emily Bowker, Mark's wife, told Deshazer, "I hope you choose to live a life of sobriety."

Friends and colleagues followed.

Amy Holtz, a first-year teacher with Dawn at Somers, told of the tears in one young student's eyes two days earlier, prompted by an unprovoked memory of Miss Bowker six months after her death.

Holtz noted Deshazer's strong family showing in the courtroom. She told him of her forgiveness. But she reminded him, "in that instant you broke several hundred hearts. You fell asleep, and we lost Dawn."

Amity Malberg, a friend and teacher, said Dawn understood that the most important place to be beautiful was inside, "first, through her inner walk with Christ."

The night before the crash, Dawn had discussed her choice to stay away from alcohol and drugs in order to keep changing her life for the better.

"I think it's weird that just the night before, we had that discussion," Malberg said, pointing out that Deshazer had the same choice to make. "She was choosing how she wanted her life to be. Won't you do the same?"

Mavis Deshazer then took the stand in her grandson's defense.

She recounted how the young boy was taken from his mother at age 12, and went to live with an aunt and uncle. His aunt died, and his uncle was committed to the mental hospital at Warm Springs.

Deshazer's grandparents took him in, and by the time he was 15, she found him hiding under her bed to avoid the law, she said.

He was a typical high-school student with average grades and an interest in sports, she said, and he is truthful.

"He wouldn't even lie to the probation officer," Deshazer said. "And he's probably one of the hardest-working people I know."

He has dreams of raising his son, she said, of building a career. He is an attentive father, she added, who takes on full responsibility when he has his son.

"Since the accident, he found God," she said, "and that is what he wants." His habit of drinking and using drugs can be attributed his choice of friends, she said.

For the past six months, he could not be in a room alone, and she said she often found him crying and saying, "It should have been me and not Dawn," Deshazer said.

He was injured badly in the crash, breaking 52 bones in his face and undergoing seven surgeries. Another is urgently needed to repair his eye socket and another to graft bone in his mouth.

"As grandparents, we are not trying to forestall his consequences," Deshazer said. "We know he can physically take it." They also want him to complete substance-abuse treatment, as does he, she said.

In the end, Jason Deshazer stood and faced Bowker's family.

"This is the hardest thing I've ever done. I apologize for what I've done," he said. Pledging to take full advantage of drug treatment, he pledge to change. "I won't be back here.

"Dawn sounded awesome. You guys are strong," he struggled with the words. "I'd love to visit you and talk with you and have you tell me that.

"I beg for your forgiveness. I am so sorry." He said he looked for his sentence to make him a better Christian, and show there are consequences for wrong actions.

He then turned to Stadler and said, "I'm ready for my sentencing, whatever the court feels is appropriate."

Along with the 10-year sentence, Deshazer is ordered to pay a $1,000 fine with credit for time served, and make more than $12,000 restitution to the family.

After court adjourned, Bowker's family and friends generally agreed that the potential of Deshazer spending 2 1/2 years in prison was inadequate. Some cited the lax message it would send to others, some said it would not be long enough for Deshazer to change.

"I just hope that what he shared" in court, Irene Bowker said, "he will live up to it, that he will have an influence on the kids."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com