Updated 6/20/2008 7:08:23 PM
ATLANTA -- A new Georgia law that toughens DUI penalties takes effect July 1. The Governor's Office of Highway Safety (GOHS) used the new law to help kick off "Operation Zero Tolerance" at Lenox Mall Friday.
From now through July 6, police in Georgia will concentrate patrols and checkpoints to crack down on impaired drivers.
At a news conference, Robert Dallas, the Director of GOHS said, "It's a decision each of us has to make when we get behind a wheel: do we drink, or, do we drive?"
Many times those words fall on deaf ears.
The family of 11-year-old Briton Batchelor attended Friday's news conference. Briton's last Fourth of July was in 2001. He was killed by a drunk driver three days later. Briton and his sister Alene were riding in the back seat of the family's SUV when a drunk driver plowed into the back of their vehicle on I-285 near the Riverdale Road exit.
Alene Batchelor was 15 on the day of the accident. She's 22 years old now.
"I sat pinned in my seat by the belt, heard the glass shatter faintly, and watched the view from my window change from asphalt to sky and back again," she said.
She was hanging upside down from her seat belt as the SUV came to rest on its top. She finally saw her brother lying on the pavement, tossed from the vehicle.
"He was in the fetal position, his eyes were closed, it looked just like he was sleeping but there was a pool of blood underneath him," Batchelor said.
She was transported to Southern Regional Medical Center wondering if her brother was going to make it. Briton Batchelor died almost instantly. Lyteese Tunstall is Briton and Alene's mother. She received a phone call from her husband when the accident happened and drove to the crash scene.
"All I can remember is just running down I-285, one shoe broke off and just trying to get to my child, I just needed to be with my child," she said.
Both Alene Batchelor and her mother are happy the DUI law has become tougher, but think it's not tough enough. The drunk driver who killed Briton received ten years.
"They gave him 14 years; only ten to serve," Tunstall said. "Briton was 11; he (the suspect) didn't even get a year for each year of Briton's life."
About the stepped up efforts by law enforcement, she said, "It's senseless to drink and drive and jeopardize the lives of others, as well as yourself."
