The deadly results that can happen when someone is texting while driving hit home hard this week.
Seventeen-year-old Carlee Rose Bollig, 17, Little Falls, pled guilty to two counts of criminal-vehicular homicide stemming from an accident last summer in Becker. Bollig was driving a car that hit another car, killing Charles Maurer, 54, Becker, and his daughter Cassie, 10.
Bollig was also charged with using a wireless communications device while driving, as well as driving without a valid license. Bollig was sending and receiving text messages at the time of the awful collision. She was driving a pickup and sped through a red light on Hwy. 10 when her vehicle slammed into the other vehicle, killing the father and daughter.
Maurer died the evening of the crash; Cassie died 10 days afterward.
Court records stated friends in the car with Bollig repeatedly told her to quit using her cellphone while driving, but she did not listen to their good advice. A search of the vehicle she was driving uncovered synthetic marijuana and a smoking pipe.
Bollig will be sentenced March 4 in Sherburne County District Court. She will receive a juvenile sentence, as well as an adult sentence that will be imposed on her if she does not follow precisely the terms of her juvenile sentence.
It’s such a shame this girl had to learn the hard way. It’s a shame a deceased father and daughter had to become her “wake-up call.” The awful incident will no doubt haunt and hound Bollig the rest of her life.
We can only hope when the judge pronounces her sentence, a big provision in that sentence will be that Bollig must give talks to groups of young people about the horrific dangers of texting while driving. That message, coming from her in a heartfelt way, would be the surest way to get through to young people – and older people, we might add.
In fact, it would be a good thing if Bollig would be willing (or ordered) to make a public-service TV commercial about the terrible dangers of texting while driving. We hope Bollig can find some kind of redemption through this tragedy, and the surest way she will redeem herself and her life will be to warn and remind others constantly of the sad outcome of her terribly poor judgment on that night.
