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Life sentence

The bereaved husband and father faced an eternity of sorrow, the teenage driver 30 years for manslaughter. Now they are working together to prevent deaths by reckless teen drivers.

By COLETTE BANCROFT
Published July 9, 2004

	[Times photo: Bob Croslin]
	Bruce Murakami stands at the site on Tampa’s Hillsborough Avenue where his wife, Cindy, and daughter, Chelsea, were killed in 1998 when teenager Justin Cabezas, drag racing in a rented car, crashed into their van.
	[Photo courtesy of Safe Teen Driver]
	Justin Cabezas speaks to a youth group about safe driving and the consequences of making bad decisions behind the wheel.
	Cindy Murakami, left, and her daughter, Chelsea, were pulling out of a supermarket parking lot when the fatal crash occurred. [Photo courtesy of Bruce Murakami]

ST. PETERSBURG - The packed assembly hall at Faith Covenant Church in St. Petersburg is hushed as Bruce Murakami tells his story. In 1998, he says, his wife, Cindy, and their 11-year-old daughter, Chelsea, died when a speeding car slammed into their minivan and turned it into an inferno.

Murakami saw the smoke from the family's nearby home and got to the van while it was still burning. As he watched his wife's and daughter's lives end, his life changed forever.

Tears tremble in listeners' eyes. The silence deepens as another man takes the stage, nodding to Murakami as they trade places.

Justin Cabezas was 19 when he made an instantaneous decision to drag race in a rented car on Hillsborough Avenue in Tampa. His life changed that day, too, he says: He is the man who killed Cindy and Chelsea.

"This is a story about what not to do," Cabezas says. "Because of what I did, two people are gone."

It's a story he has told dozens of times for Safe Teen Driver, the organization Murakami founded to smack young drivers between the eyes with the consequences of being reckless.

"It really gives you both sides of the equation. That's what's different about our program," Murakami says.

But Safe Teen Driver is also a way for Murakami and Cabezas to survive and move on.

Murakami spent three years and thousands of dollars pursuing Cabezas, pressing prosecutors to charge him, hungering for justice.

After Cabezas finally was charged with vehicular homicide, Murakami had a change of heart. He pleaded for mercy from the judge. Cabezas avoided jail time, but as part of his sentence he was ordered to do community service by speaking at Safe Teen Driver presentations.

Now, Cabezas says, "My hours are up," but he's still standing up there, telling his story.

"You have to deal with your anger or it will destroy you," Murakami says. "If I hadn't found a way to forgive, I would have been a third victim."

Cabezas says, "It's hard for me to admit that I was an idiot at some point. But it's a small redemption."

Murakami bounds up the stairs of his condo in St. Pete Beach. A tall, slim man with a deep suntan and a shock of thick black hair, he is, he says, "fiftyish" but looks a decade younger.

The living room offers a sunny view of the Intracoastal's intersection with Blind Pass. The room is serenely decorated in cool greens and taupes, with touches of tropical hot colors that evoke Murakami's upbringing in Hawaii.

"Sorry about the mess," he says; he's having some remodeling done. The place looks immaculate. Shelves on one wall hold family photos, among them a portrait of Cindy and Chelsea.

Murakami has just returned from a trip to Los Angeles, where he met with a team of movie producers interested in his story.

"I could just sign the story over to them, but I don't want to do that. I may be like an executive producer or something like that. I want control over the integrity of the story."

If he doesn't sound like a newbie to show business, it's because he's not. He and Justin have told their story on Dateline, Good Morning America, The Early Show, to Connie Chung, John Walsh and Montel Williams. "We might be on Oprah," he says. "That's a big one."

The first time Dateline ran the segment on them, Murakami's Web site got 11/2-million hits and crashed.

When he created Safe Teen Driver, he never envisioned the response, he says. "I'm flattered and honored and somewhat embarrassed that it has gotten so much attention."

All he wanted was to memorialize his wife and daughter and to deal with his own conflicting emotions: the desire for justice and the need to forgive.

Bruce and Cindy Murakami had been together more than 20 years. They met and married in Hawaii. He adopted her son Joshua, and they had another son, Brody, and adopted Chelsea. They moved to Washington state and then to Tampa, where he worked as a building contractor.

In 1998, Joshua was a student at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla., and Brody was living with him there, attending a private high school. Bruce and Cindy decided to move to Oklahoma to be closer to their boys.

They were packed for the move when Cindy and Chelsea pulled out of a supermarket parking lot into the path of the Dodge Intrepid that Cabezas was driving.

Murakami's grief left him numb; he spent days just sitting on the beach. But he also took action, leading a petition drive to have medians at the crash site redesigned to make it safer. He also sued Dollar Rent-a-Car, which had rented the Intrepid to Cabezas' parents. Dollar settled the case for an undisclosed amount.

Cabezas wasn't charged in the crash. At first, that didn't disturb Murakami, although he was "livid" when a state trooper told a reporter that Cindy might have been responsible.

But within months he began to feel that someone should be held accountable. He hired a traffic engineering firm to investigate the accident. It found evidence that Cabezas had been speeding and racing with another car. It even had a statement from the passenger in that car.

Murakami presented his case to the Hillsborough County State Attorney's office, but the office was in turmoil during the final months of State Attorney Harry Coe's tenure (Coe committed suicide in July 2000). In November 2000, almost exactly two years after the crash, the state attorney's office announced that it would not file charges.

Murakami was devastated.

When Mark Ober ran for the state attorney's job, Murakami saw his TV ads. "He said he wanted to bring change, and I believed him. So I figured I'd try one more time."

He hired lawyer Rick Terrana to represent him because Terrana was recommended by several people as "the nastiest, most aggressive criminal attorney in Tampa," Murakami says.

Cabezas was charged with vehicular homicide in June 2001.

Murakami, who had never met Justin Cabezas, had always pictured him as "some spoiled punk kid." In September 2001, Murakami saw him for the first time, in a Tampa courtroom. "Here was this clean-cut kid with a tie. I thought, this is the kid? He didn't look like he'd do something so stupid."

He didn't speak to Cabezas that day, but he began to wonder what kind of effect the accident had had on the young man's life.

He went home after the early morning hearing, thinking of mercy as well as justice. "I turned on the TV, and the towers were burning," he says. "It was Sept. 11."

Justin Cabezas is 24 now. He has his own apartment in Bradenton and a relationship with "a very nice girl." He works part time as a veterinary technician and manages pet shops in Bradenton and Venice.

Cabezas, tall and broad-shouldered, wears blue scrubs and running shoes to work. "I like to see what dog people pick; I think it tells you a lot about their personalities," he says one day in Bradenton.

He waves at a low-slung speckled puppy with long ears. "I'm a bassett hound kind of guy myself. I like to kick back on the couch and relax."

That wasn't an option for a long time. "A split-second decision can reverberate through your entire life," he says. Although he did not suffer the agonizing personal loss Murakami did, Cabezas says the years following the accident were difficult for him.

He struggled with the knowledge that he had caused Cindy's and Chelsea's deaths. "I take personal responsibility for two people being gone."

But not knowing whether the law would hold him responsible put his whole life on hold. "It was like a giant weight lifted off me when I heard they weren't going to charge me after two years. Then it came back again a year later."

It was another year and a half before he was sentenced. "Holding your breath is probably the best description. Everything is on hold, school, your relationships, your career. You're like, "What's the point?' Tomorrow might be your last free day.

"You're almost begging for your fate to be handed to you."

His fate could have been much worse; he could have been sentenced to as much as 30 years in prison. But he got help from Murakami, his longtime pursuer, who appeared in court when Cabezas pleaded guilty to two counts of manslaughter. Murakami asked the judge to withhold a finding of guilt and allow Cabezas to work with him in the program that would become Safe Teen Driver.

Cabezas was sentenced to two years of house arrest, eight years of probation and 300 hours of community service. When Murakami proposed that they work together speaking to young people, Cabezas says, "I was totally gung ho. I was like, thank you, God. This was a person you never thought you'd get forgiveness from."

He found that house arrest, which he has completed, was in some ways more difficult than jail time. "In jail, you're cut off. You don't have choices. Under house arrest, you're in real life.

"Your friends say, "We're going to the movies.' No, you can't go. Your girlfriend says, "Let's go to the mall.' No, you can't go. There are so many temptations."

Talking to young people about his experience became not a burden but a passion. "There are always cynics who say, "He's just doing it because he has to, and the minute he has done that time . . .' " Cabezas makes a noise like a speeding car.

"I say, please don't judge my character by just one act. I'm owning up to it. I don't want people to be in my same shoes."

Teens are constantly told not to drink and drive, he says. "But you don't hear that even if you're sober you shouldn't drive 300 mph. You can be totally sober and with it and still be making stupid decisions."

Speed is part of our culture, glorified in movies and song. But disaster can happen in an instant. "That's part of the message. It happens in a split second. You could be in my spot."

The message of Safe Teen Driver goes beyond driving behavior, Cabezas says. It's about careful decisionmaking in every context. "Everything we do, we're accountable for."

He says he adapts his speech to different audiences: teens, parents, drivers' education instructors. "When you see the kids taking it to heart, it feels so good." And he has learned to understand different responses.

One group of high school students booed him when he came on stage. "Bruce was embarrassed. I thought it was great. You think I'm a bad guy? Then don't be me. That's the point."

The excitement of media attention is lost on Cabezas, who says he rarely watches or reads stories about himself.

"I think I've become numb to it." But he says clipping on one more microphone is worthwhile if it supports the foundation.

He's delighted that Safe Teen Driver is growing. "I'm really trying to be involved. I keep saying to Bruce, I can help you. I wouldn't have done it if I didn't believe in it."

Murakami says, "I told Justin, I'll use you until you get too old." Safe Teen Driver's target group is ages 15 to 25, and they respond best to their peers.

Jeff Burton, the pastor at Faith Covenant Church, says he thinks the Safe Teen Driver presentation at his church affected young people there. "It's a very, very powerful story, to the point and very real."

The foundation, incorporated as a nonprofit in 2003, is adding chapters in Florida and New York that will present the same kind of programs to young people.

Its budget this year is about half a million dollars. "I don't know where it will all come from," Murakami says, although the foundation is up for grants and has received support from the Florida Department of Transportation and law enforcement and school groups.

Murakami gets no salary from Safe Teen Driver, only expenses. "Until today, I've spent all my own money.

"I have a five-year plan for the organization. I think we'll have at least a dozen chapters by then. And someone else would run it."

He might be a consultant, he says. "I'd be in a little grass shack on the beach, with a surfboard."

This summer, he is busy with the production of a new Web site and public service announcements for television. The live presentation will get some high-tech tuning as well. "We'll start with five or six minutes of grabbing video, then it will be Justin and me. We want it to be more edgy. It's costing quite the little fortune."

At times like this Murakami can sound almost jaunty, but he never gets far from the reality of his loss. He spends several hours each day responding to phone calls and e-mails from people who have heard about Safe Teen Driver and want to share their experiences. "Sometimes it becomes overwhelming. You keep reliving your own pain. I wish there was a way to stop this madness."

He has a girlfriend, Murakami says. "But I don't see myself getting married again. I'm so busy with what I'm doing.

"I still deal with my own loss, my own grief. It's always going to be there. You just learn how to manage it."

Creating Safe Teen Driver is part of that management, for him and for the man who turned his life upside down.

Cabezas says, "You have to find a way to have faith in people. That's rare."

When he stands up in front of a group of teens and tells his story, "There's this glimmer of hope. Your life feels so much better. It feels so damn strong, it's hard to deny."

- Colette Bancroft can be reached at 727 893-8435 or bancroft@sptimes.com For information about Safe Teen Driver, go to www.safeteendriver.org or call 727 420-7937.

[Last modified July 8, 2004, 15:30:31]