Victim Impact Statement for Jonathan Keogh.
Jonathan was the “baby” of our family. I clearly remember the day he was born, I was a very happy sister. He was born on a cold winter’s Sunday. My older sister Kerstin, and younger brother Craig, could not wait to see him at the hospital. We all hurried into the maternity ward with my dad; my mother was holding him and we all agreed that he was perfect; and my sister and I wanted to take him home right away.
We were told that we would need to wait a few days.
The next day, Monday morning, our dad dropped us off at school. Bursting with excitement, we raced to tell our teachers and school-mates that we had a beautiful baby brother; and my Mum and Dad told us that he was going to be called Jonathan.
To us, this was the best news in the world.
Twenty-eight years later Jonathan died on a Sunday. Early on Monday morning my destroyed parents stood in the cold hall-way of my house and told me that he was dead. Half an hour later I had to tell my older sister that he had been killed in an car "accident". It is the hardest thing I have ever done.
We had to wait a few days before his body was returned.
Our beautiful baby brother was given back to us in a coffin. The wonderful face he was born with was lifeless and showed obvious signs of his violent and completely needless end.
To us, this was the worst news in the world.
None of us asked to be here, we still don’t understand, or believe, how this could have happened to Jonathan, and to us. Perhaps this is a collective nightmare? What are we doing in a Christchurch Courthouse facing what has happened to someone who could not have been dearer to us. We all just need to wake up, and it won’t be true. Yet we’re not silly fantasists, in reality every morning we haul ourselves out of bed, in complete consciousness that the nightmare is real. We are forced to face the day without Jonathan, and live the nightmare.
Due to shameful actions of one individual we find it necessary to report the impact of Jonathan’s death, and its circumstances, upon us. We have been asked to describe the indescribable, bear the unbearable. Words won’t cut it. But we wish that our reports go some way to describe how Jonathan’s death has impacted upon us.
At no stage have any of us forgotten the “absent” victim, Jonathan, aka Johnny, Jono, JK. He is not here to talk or write a report, or face the person responsible for his death. We are here to try to do this for him. That is why we are participating in the criminal court process. We have not been drawn to entertain the offender, or partake in a vain grief “festival.”. As we always were in his life, we are now at hand for him in death. We are simply here for Jonathan.
Jonathan’s death is, without comparison, the most distressing, unnatural, savage and disgusting thing that has ever happened to us. It feels like he has been murdered.
In the early hours of Monday May 15, when the Police first told my parents of Jonathan’s killing, our lives were thrust into an abhorrent miasma that has no obvious end.
Jonathan died at approximately 7:45 on Sunday evening. This marks the time when Jonathan, our perfect example of kindness, vibrant talent, youthful ability, fun, and gregariousness was needlessly destroyed. When Jonathan life was snatched by the completely unnecessary actions of another, the lynch pin was yanked from my family’s life.
Our dear Jonathan died in what was left of the metal wreck that was once his car. He died violently, in the dark, on State Highway 1, so close to his destination, no chance for good-bye, surrounded by shocked strangers. These realities are hard for us to stomach. However, what is far more repugnant than this is the possibility that the actions of one of those strangers instigated the destruction of “our boy.”
Little wonder we have often been staring into space, dreading being alone, suffering from depression, losing weight, finding it tough to remember basic things, unexpectedly crying in public, being plagued by horrendous nightmares and surviving on sleeping pills. The nightmare we are currently living is destroying what was once our happy world. Our world is now mad, we do not know why. Laughter has been replaced with a crippling grief. Life’s lost its spark; that went out at 7:45 on Mother’s Day.
We were once all born optimists. Jonathan, in particular, was an optimist. Life was good, and with a little hard work and skill it could always get better. Now we have been thrust into a black pit of boundless self-destructive grief. We hate feeling like this. None of us have yet found the bottom of this pit; none of us have yet found any peace. We are hostage to a mental holocaust none of us deserved. We are not ready for acceptance; forgiveness can never be contemplated.
Our lives are shattered fragments, we have been forced to face an immorality that we do not, and cannot, comprehend. We are all good law abiding citizens (not one of us has a criminal record). Most of us drive, most of us drink, but we have never, ever combined the two.
Jonathan was a very sociable person and has been described as “a leader” at group functions. After drinking Jonathan always took a taxi home, he’d leave his car where he parked it before he had his first drink. Like the vast majority of his peers Jonathan knew the destruction drink driving could cause. What Jonathan never knew was that, in the prime of his life, he would become the victim of a 66 year old recidivist’s repulsive and wholly selfish routine (Jonathan’s death marks this man’s fourth conviction for drink driving).
We ask:
How could anyone miss the most fundamental and ubiquitous social marketing messages in our society?
Has this man been living his life in a cave?
Has he never understood that drinking and driving ruins lives?
We have always understood this, so why do we have to live with the consequences of someone who in his 66 years has learnt nothing?
An unbearable fact is that this man has repeatedly shown that he is unfit to be on the road. He has repeatedly been given his licence back. In some ways it feels like he has been in training to cause this tragedy.
Learning the age and the recidivistic trait (his previous convictions are public record) of the offender has only added to our pain. We are incredulous; at least someone young, stupid and new to criminal legal system of this country has the possibility of rehabilitation. I used to think wisdom came with age; clearly we, Jonathan in particular, were sadly mistaken.
We question how this could be possible:
How can this happen to our family in a supposedly first world country?
Are we being asked to accept that life, and death, is simply not fair?
Written by Jonathan’s older sister Megan McPherson; presented to the Christchurch District Court in July 2006
