On the day he admitted guilt for driving drunk and killing a retired Maryland couple, Thomas D. Cypress did not have to face the victims' grandchildren.
But their words, read from letters Wednesday in a Miami-Dade courtroom, carried more than enough emotional sting:
Cooper Kirkpatrick, 6: ``Once, I saw a jellyfish in the water with them. That was an awesome time.''
Quinn Kirkpatrick, 7: ``I love them so much that I wish that I would die with them and I missed sailing with them and canoeing.''
Katie Kirkpatrick, 9: ``I never finished my drawing lessons with Pop. He was a wonderful artist.''
In the jury box, Cypress, 56, his face sallow and draped by stringy locks of hair, looked down. Relatives of victims Robert and Paulette Kirkpatrick burst into tears as the young children's mother read the letters into the record.
Cypress, the brother of former Miccosukee Chairman Billy Cypress, was sentenced to 12 years in prison. He did not address the court or the Kirkpatrick family.
Prosecutors said Cypress' blood-alcohol level was three times the legal limit in February 2009 when he veered his truck into the opposite lane on the Tamiami Trail in West Miami-Dade, smashing into the sedan rented by the victims, both 63.
Retired grade-school teachers-turned-artists, the Kirkpatricks were in Florida for an art show and vacation.
At the time, Cypress was driving with a suspended license after an earlier DUI charge. Before that, he had twice been arrested on DUI charges, including one in 2004 that was dismissed because court-hearing notices could not be served at the tribal reservation deep in the Everglades.
The deadly crash came at a sensitive time for the Miccosukees, who were sparring with Miami-Dade prosecutors over the release of tribal police records chronicling a separate fatal crash involving a tribe member.
In the Kirkpatrick case, the accident was investigated not by Miccosukee police but by the Florida Highway Patrol, which amassed overwhelming evidence against Cypress, an unemployed airboat driver.
Rescuers pulled Cypress from his mangled truck. His blood-alcohol level measured .249, well above the legal limit of .08. Officers found beer cans in his truck, and witnesses had seen him weaving in and out of traffic.
Because of his driving record and the fear that he might flee to the reservation, where state authorities have no jurisdiction, he was held in a Miami-Dade jail until Wednesday's hearing. For further information, contact your Local Florida DUI Attorney.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/06/30/1709631/deadly-driver-sentenced-as-tearful.html#ixzz0sQecwz8l
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