Letter: Court system too lenient with woman who killed grad student
July 17, 2008
To the Editor:
April Hankinson’s punishment for killing OU physics grad student Abhishek Singh on June 30, 2007 is ridiculous (The NEWS, July 10). She was originally charged with two counts of aggravated vehicular homicide. One count was for being under the influence of alcohol, and another for reckless driving. She was also charged with two counts of obstruction of justice for hiding the identity and whereabouts of the passenger. She is now only being punished for aggravated vehicular homicide for reckless driving. The count for driving under the influence was dismissed because it was unclear if she was above the legal limit.
My question is, why is it unclear if she had a blood alcohol level above the legal limit? When the police arrived at the scene, she admitted that she had consumed too much alcohol to be driving. Therefore, I do not understand why no action was taken to determine if she was drunk or not. Police are trained to administer a variety of field sobriety tests. I thought that all officers were capable of determining if someone was drunk at a scene. So why wasn’t it done during this case?
With prior traffic violations in addition to these latest charges, April should be in jail as long as possible so she does not hurt anyone else. Lowering her prison sentence from four years to just one year on good behavior truly trivializes what she has done, especially when her sentence was lowered because she helped catch the passenger who fled. One would think that the dismissal of the obstruction of justice counts would have taken care of that.
Therefore, why was her aggravated vehicular homicide sentence lowered when that had nothing to do with the obstruction of justice?
The court system has taken advantage of the Singh family’s kindness for accepting a plea deal that is so lenient. Also, with our campus being labeled as the number-two party school, what kind of example is this to students? Both the police department and Assistant Prosecutor Driscoll have done a disservice to the community, and I am disappointed that Hankinson is not being held accountable.
With all of this said, I want to remind everyone that if you or someone you are with has had too much to drink, there are resources available to get you home safely. Campus Safe-T Patrol can walk you home, or you can call a taxi to drive you. Let’s make this campus safer for both pedestrians and drivers alike.
Carrie Ziegler
Country Trail
Loveland, Ohio
Comments
Please log in to post a comment.
