Every day Robert Collins’ thoughts begin and end with his daughter, Emily.

“First thing I think about in the morning and last thing I think about before I go to bed at night is what happened to her,” Collins said. “I think about her every morning, usually have a little conversation with her.”

Emily died more than 15 years ago on Nov. 11, 2000. She was one of three young women killed when a Jeep — driven by a college student — spun off a country road and plowed into a tree near Colgate University’s campus. The driver, who survived, had a blood alcohol content more than double the legal limit in one of two samples provided to the police.

The girls were walking in the rain and accepted a ride from Robert Koester, who had been drinking with fraternity friends at a barbeque. He crashed into a tree just a quarter-mile after he picked them up.

Katie Almeter, one of the three girls who were killed that night, was a budding track star. In high school, she developed into an exceptional sprinter, setting records that still stand today, her father, Bob Almeter, said. Unlike many high school athletes, Katie continued her athletic career in college. Shortly after enrolling at Colgate, she broke the school’s 400‐meter record in practice, Bob said.

Katie never got the opportunity to break the record in a meet. She never even got the chance to run an official race.

Katie was in her freshman year at Colgate. Emily and Rachel Nargiso — the third girl who died that night — were freshmen at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. The three grew up together in Norwich, New York, and were described as being inseparable by their family members. Emily and Rachel were visiting Katie at Colgate the weekend of the accident.

While more than 15 years have passed since the accident, the families of the three girls all said that there isn’t a day that goes by that they don’t think of them.

“She’s paramount in our minds,” Bob said of Katie. “We refer to her as ‘is.’ She is a wonderful person. And her memory is still alive with us, and our family members and our friends.”

Robert Collins said he’ll never be able to forget the tragic event that took his daughter’s life.

Shortly after the accident, the Almeter and Collins families and Rita Ashton — Rachel Nargiso’s mother — would meet every Friday night to help one another grieve. In the weekly meetings, they found they could talk freely without fear of being judged or pitied, because they were all in the same painful situation, Ashton said.

“The best part — the only time I went out — and the best moments were with the three families. We met every week,” Ashton said. “That was just kind of an escape. It was good because there came a point where we actually laughed. There was a point that you could laugh with each other because we were all in pain, so it was OK.”

While Ashton and the families of the others were eventually able to move past the loss of their loved ones, the memory of the accident is still strong.

Betsy Almeter remembers precisely how she first heard the news of her daughter’s death. With her husband away on a hunting trip, she had the house to herself. She anticipated having a quiet and relaxing weekend. Instead, she woke up at around 7:45 a.m. to her doorbell ringing and someone loudly knocking on the door.

When she saw a state trooper standing in the doorway, she panicked. The trooper asked her to sit down. She refused.

“There was a part of me that thought whatever he has come to tell me won’t have happened if I don’t let him tell me,” Betsy said. “So I went from room to room, and he kept asking me to please sit down. And I said, ‘Well, I need some light.’ So I put up the shades in each room, and then I would go to another room and put up all the shades in another room. And he kept following me around, asking me to sit down. Finally I did, and he read his statement.”

Families often lose someone to a drunk driver. In 2013 alone, 10,076 people died in the United States as a result of car crashes involving someone intoxicated behind the wheel — about one person every 52 minutes, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

In New York state, the penalty for killing someone while driving drunk – classified as vehicular manslaughter – varies depending on the blood alcohol content of the driver. Typically, a driver who registers a BAC of less than 0.18 and kills someone will be charged with vehicular manslaughter in the second degree, and can be sentenced to no more than seven years of prison time. The driver also may have to pay a $5,000 fine.

A driver who kills someone and registers a BAC of more than 0.18 would be charged with vehicular manslaughter in the first degree, and sentenced to no more than 15 years of prison time, according to Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The driver also may have to pay a $15,000 fine.

The driver of the vehicle that fateful night, Koester, registered a BAC of 0.17 and 0.13 in two blood samples provided to the police, according to the Oneida Daily Dispatch. Koester was sentenced to four years in prison. He served two‐and‐a‐half years.

Of the victims’ family members interviewed, all said they believed the four‐year sentence issued to Koester was too lenient.

Her oldest child, Jeff, was a fourth‐year architecture student at Syracuse University at the time of the accident. More than 15 years later, Jeff said he’s still bewildered by Koester’s sentence.

“I have zero faith — and probably will never have any faith — in the judicial system in this country,” he said.

While he remains angry at the court that decided on Koester’s sentence, Jeff said he is also frustrated with those who continue to drive drunk and run the risk of making the same mistake Koester made. During an interview, he made a plea for anyone who has thought about driving while under the influence to reconsider the consequences of that decision.

“I hope that you are smart enough to not put yourself in the situation where I would hate you as much as I hate him,” Jeff said. “Because you don’t want anyone to have those feelings towards you. You don’t want to take someone else’s life. You don’t want to mess someone else’s family up, because you can’t come back from it — 100 percent — not ever.”

In a series of recent messages over Facebook, Koester’s mother, Audrey, declined an interview on behalf of the family. Koester recently earned a Ph.D. in physical therapy from Emory University in Atlanta.

In a 2002 prison interview at Gowanda State Prison with two students from SU’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Koester took responsibility for the crash, saying: “I am the person responsible.”

His father, Bill, told the reporters then that Koester had told him, “’I used to think that people who drove after drinking were dirt bags. Now I wake up and I am one of those dirt bags.’”

Not all of the victims’ family members say they are still angry with Koester. Collins said he was eventually able to come to terms with what happened, and to forgive Koester for what he did.

“I told his mother, ‘I forgive him, but I don’t forget him,’” Collins said. “Forgiveness could be a hard thing, but the thing is you have to. Hate will kill you.”

Editor’s Note: Over the past month, The Daily Orange has collaborated with the Department of Newspaper and Online Journalism at Syracuse University on a series of stories relating to alcohol culture on the SU campus. Multiple stories will appear in The D.O. in the coming days.

Published on April 6, 2016 at 12:15 am