DWI Accident Victim’s Experience Tells of Danger from TX Drunk Drivers

Vincent Leone Jr. is one of the many victims of Texas drunk driving accidents. You may call him lucky. He survived.

But not without permanent disabilities, lifelong impairments, weeks in a coma, and severe brain damage from his injuries. Yet, compared to so many other victims of Texas drunk driving accidents that he has met, Mr. Leone does count himself lucky. Our Cleveland, TX injury lawyers believe that Mr. Leone’s own strength of will and determination to overcome his injuries helped him make his luck.

In a coma for 6.5 weeks from which even doctors did not know if he would emerge a vegetable, Mr. Leone initially could not speak. He had partial paralysis of the left side of his body. And he still can’t maintain enough bodily equilibrium to walk without falling.

But Mr. Leone still counts himself lucky. With will, effort, and intensive therapy, he recovered his capacity for speech and enough mobility and functionality to live somewhat independently. And he can tell others his story and provide a living example to others of the dangers of drunk driving.

Mr. Leone was just 26 years old and the proud owner of a new Corvette Stingray when a drunk driver destroyed his car and his world in 1982 in Cleveland, TX. Mr. Leone had just driven his new car off the lot when the devastating wreck occurred.

The high-speed impact from the drunk driver drove Mr. Leone’s car into a telephone pole. The pole came down through the top of his car and onto the top of his head. The closed head injury he received from the heavy pole led to his further incapacities and injuries.

The drunk driver fled the scene of the wreck and police were unable to locate him. Mr. Leone’s father hired a private investigator that found the drunk driver’s residence, littered with empty liquor bottles, but no drunk driver.

The drunk driver who hit Vincent Leone Jr. had just been released from jail on a drunk driving charge. Apparently that drunk driver spent a day in the “drunk tank,” then liquored himself up again upon release, only to crash into Mr. Leone and his new Stingray. According to the CDC, the average drunk driver drives drunk 80 times before his or her first DWI arrest. Mr. Leone comments that the penalties for repeated drunk driving offenses are “so lax.”

Our Cleveland, TX injury lawyers agree. Even though Texas has recently strengthened the penalties somewhat for drunk driving offenses, the penalties still bear no real relationship to the true severity of the crimes. Drunk drivers who kill their victims might get a few years in jail. They might get off the hook entirely. But the victim’s penalty is the loss of his or her life; and the victim has committed no offense before being thus penalized.