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Tragedy turns into cautionary tale

A driver who caused a death makes amends by speaking about the ills of drunken driving.

DELRAY BEACH - Every morning, Jessica Leslie thinks about the man she killed.

She spends the rest of the day trying to forgive herself.

It's been 10 months since she left prison, but for the rest of her life she'll be branded: Felon. Youthful offender. Danger to society. Killer.

For the rest of her life, she'll be haunted by the sight of that arm around the left front tire of her Toyota Celica.

Four years ago, Leslie was celebrating her plans to join the U.S. Air Force.

Now she stands in front of 250 strangers and explains how she went from being vice president of Students Against Drunk Driving in high school to pleading guilty to DUI manslaughter.

Sitting in the living room of her Delray Beach apartment, Leslie, 24, unflinchingly talks about the night she ended Patrick McDonough's life.

"I had two beers and two shots," she said.

It was Nov. 23, 2001. Thanksgiving. She and a friend, whom she identifies only as Dave, had gone to a nightclub in Fort Lauderdale where she had previously worked. At 4:03 a.m., she took money out of an ATM and drove out of a parking garage.

"I don't remember driving. I woke up on impact," she said. It was just before 6 a.m.

She and her friend walked across the street to find a pay phone. When she returned, a sheriff's deputy was standing next to her car.

As Leslie approached the deputy, she saw a tuft of hair underneath the front of her car. She thought it was an animal. Then she saw the arm.

"The officer just put me in cuffs right away and put me in the back of his car," she said.

At one point, she asked him, "Sir, did I kill someone?"

"Yes ma'am, you did," the deputy replied.

Over the next several hours, she told investigators, in detail, that she had been driving drunk. She was 20 at the time of the wreck.

McDonough, 41, whom Leslie barreled over on a median and dragged about 30 feet at U.S. 441 and Glades Road, was a vendor for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel .

McDonough was raised in Lutherville, Md., the middle child of three. He was born with a detached retina, and at just over a year old lost one eye.

At age 10, he told his mother he would one day move to Florida.

He moved to Pompano Beach in 1989 to help a friend start a pool cleaning company, though the business foundered.

"He was a very loving, giving, forgiving kind of person," his mother, Claire McDonough, said from her Maryland home, where her son's furniture remains in his childhood bedroom. "He was very serious in regards to loyalty and honesty."

Leslie's blood-alcohol level was 0.15 percent, nearly twice the level at which a person is presumed to be too drunk to drive.

"She deliberately drank underage and defiantly got in that car," Claire McDonough said.

But she also immediately took responsibility and showed genuine remorse.

And because of that, Claire McDonough said she decided Leslie, who was facing a possible 15-year prison term, should not waste her life in prison.

"This is what my son would have wanted," she said. "I know in my head that forgiving her releases a burden, but in my heart, as a mother, it hurts. It really hurts."

At the time, Assistant State Attorney Elizabeth Parker said Leslie was too young and too forthcoming with her guilt to spend a decade in prison.

"I could see this had a dramatic effect on her," Parker said. "It's very rare for someone to step forward the night of, on scene, and show remorse and accept responsibility for their actions.

"This was a very rare case where the victim's family didn't want to see another person hurt, knowing that Jessica was such a young girl who had a life full of so many opportunities ahead of her."

Claire McDonough believed Leslie would make more of an impact on the community in her son's name through community service and speaking to students about drunk driving dangers.

On Nov. 18, 2003, prosecutors offered Leslie a plea bargain limiting her prison time to 18 months, followed by 10 years of probation, which included 500 hours of community service as well as speaking engagements.

During her first two months in the Palm Beach County Jail, Leslie rarely left her pod.

She was moved to an all-girls youthful offender program at the Hernando Correctional Institution, where she took Web design and substance abuse classes. In October 2004, she was transferred to a work-release program in West Palm Beach, where she lived in a college dormitory setting with 50 other women and worked part-time at a nearby Applebee's.

March 9 was her independence day.

Leslie now works 40 hours a week in sales for a Boca Raton finance firm and volunteers with Habitat for Humanity.

Her driver's license was permanently revoked, so she relies heavily on family, friends and her partner, a woman she met in the prison work release program. And she lives with restrictions, including asking her probation officer for permission to travel outside the county.

Leslie also has a donation to make. McDonough's family asked that she give money to his favorite charity, Guide Dogs for the Blind. Leslie said she intends to pay for the training of one dog. The cost is $38,675.

She'll continue speaking to offenders at a monthly court-ordered panel discussion put on by Mothers Against Drunk Driving. She gets nervous and has stage fright, but is more concerned with reaching the audience.

"I try to make eye contact with people, but without speaking to someone one on one, it can be very difficult to read if what you are saying is making a difference in their lives," Leslie said.

She begins and ends her talk asking them to think of their biggest fear and regret.

"I hope that my story instills one more fear in them," she said.

In a letter to prosecutors on Leslie's behalf during the trial, Claire McDonough wrote that she prayed "Miss Leslie will remember (Patrick) on every anniversary of his death so as to never put anyone else through this terrible pain."

Leslie wipes tears from her cheeks. Her lips tremble.

"I think about him every day of my life, not just on Nov. 23," she said. "This is me."

[Last modified January 16, 2006, 00:40:11]