Dispatcher: 911. What's the address of your emergency? Reggie: It's the highway. It's on the west end of - end of Logan, It's down by the Hunter Education Center...Hurry, send an ambulance. Dispatcher: What do you have? Is he breathing? Reggie: They say he's not breathing. Dispatcher: He's not breathing? Reggie: No, he's not breathing. Dispatcher: Okay, can we start CPR? Reggie: No. I don't know anything about it. Dispatcher: If I were to tell you how to do it, can you do it with me? Does anybody there know how? Mike: Hello this is Mike Harper, I'm an Emergency Medical Technician. We have two 10-85 Echos here. 10-85 ECHO: OBVIOUS FATALITY Reggie: You know you leave for work every morning. People do it everyday. Never, ever do you leave with the intention to hurt someone. Ever. REGGIE SHAW Reggie: Never did I either, you know. When I left that morning it was definitely not my intention to hurt or harm anyone...and I took two lives. JACKIE FURFARO Jackie: I looked around the room and I saw Jim's license in the hands of one of the police officers and I realized that he was dead and I just started crying and repeating the word "no." LEILA O'DELL Leila: Keith was my whole world. He had his work and he was so important to his work and his work for him, but for me, he was my whole world. [sigh] DON LINTON, PROSECUTING ATTORNEY Don, Prosecuting Attorney: On the morning of September 22nd, 2006, Reggie Shaw was driving a vehicle on the Valley View Highway in an easterly direction. Another car was following him; it was driven by a fellow, Mr. Kaiserman. JOHN KAISERMAN John Kaiserman: The driver of the vehicle ahead of me had seemed to be distracted most of the way over the mountain and crossed over the center line on more than one occasion and I do remember on that particular occasion of the accident, as he crossed over the centerline, and you do the math in your head and you see the car coming and you think, "This is not going to be good." Don, Prosecuting Attorney: When Reggie's car crossed the centerline, and clipped this other vehicle, it caused the vehicle to spin out of control. John Kaiserman: My pickup, obviously being much larger than the Saturn, basically picked the Saturn up and carried it off into the ditch. Don, Prosecuting Attorney: Mr. Kaiserman's truck impacted the Furfaro vehicle at a high rate of speed. The combined speed of both vehicles would probably be close to 100 miles an hour as they struck. Unfortunately, at that moment, we believe that both Mr. Furfaro and Mr. O'Dell were killed instantly. News Anchor: Two people have died in a crash in Cache County. The men were driving to ATK Thiokol when their car was hit by two vehicles on State Road 30 near Logan. First, head on by an SUV, and then by a pickup truck. Thirty-eight-year-old, James Furfaro and 50 year-old Keith O'Dell died at the scene. BART RINDLISBACHER, UTAH HIGHWAY PATROL Bart: My name's Bart Rindlisbacher. I'm a trooper with the Utah Highway Patrol. I was the investigating officer on the Reggie Shaw crash. When I arrived the scene was tense. Medics were on scene obviously trying to take care of the injured that were there. We realized that there were fatalities involved and it is a sad state when we have to remove the victims from their car and deal with identifying them and notifying their family. It's a traumatic thing for everyone involved. I think the average person upon seeing this would be horrified. I know that in my 15 years in law enforcement I've dealt with this numerous times and I still rarely sleep at night when I handle a fatality-involved accident. As we left the crash scene, I had met with Reggie Shaw and we were on our way to the hospital and I actually was transporting him there and I observed that he was texting on his phone - sending and receiving text messages. That's what piqued my interest into checking into his texting. Reggie: On my way to work, I was sending and receiving text messages when I drifted across the centerline and struck another car. They were both killed on impact. Leila: Five months later I learned that they were checking into his cell phone records and found out he was texting and I remembered being so shocked that someone could be so selfish and irresponsible and killed my husband. Jackie: All I can think when I think about the fact that he was texting, is the fact that it doesn't take a lot of common sense to realize that when you're driving a vehicle, at whatever speed, when you're texting you're taking at least one hand off the wheel and your taking your eyes off the road. And it doesn't take a lot of common sense to figure out that that's not what you should be doing when you're driving a vehicle. Don, Prosecuting Attorney: It's a very dangerous thing to do and some of the studies that we've seen indicate that driving while texting is very comparable to driving while you're under the influence and in fact it's more dangerous, in many cases, than driving when you're under the influence of alcohol. Studies from the University of Utah show that if you're driving and texting at the same time, you're about as dangerous as someone who's driving with a blood alcohol content that's twice the legal limit. DR. DAVID STRAYER, UNIVERSITY OF UTAH David: My name's David Strayer and I'm a Professor of Psychology at the University of Utah. Drivers who are text messaging or even talking on their cell phone suffer from something called "inattention blindness" where something as obvious as a gorilla walking across the street, you're blind to it, you don't see it because your mind is so preoccupied or absorbed with the phone conversation or the text message that you just don't see the obvious thing that everybody else would see. About 80% of accidents on our highway are due to some form of driver distraction where your mind's taken off the road for some period of time, and given that we have upwards of 40,000 fatalities on the highway every year, it's a significant problem. Reporter: Polls show close to 70% of adults who drive admit they send and read text messages while driving. The same Harris Interactive Poll also found texting while driving is a teenager's number one distraction. Reggie: You know it pretty much runs my life. Everything I do on a daily basis is kind of centered around that accident and what happened. MARY JANE AND ED SHAW, REGGIE'S PARENTS Mary Jane Shaw: Things came easy for him. Athletics. He loved basketball, just loved playing basketball. And he played football; he enjoyed that. And then he got into track and he never ran track before and [they] didn't have anybody to run hurdles, and he said, "Oh, I'll do it." He's just a special, special kid. JUDGE THOMAS WILLMORE, FIRST DISTRICT COURT Judge Willmore: I don't think anyone feels that Reggie Shaw is a bad, bad person. There's nobody that feels that. He just made a terrible decision in texting. Don, Prosecuting Attorney: So we charged Mr. Shaw with negligent homicide. That is, by texting while driving, he wasn't exercising the due care that a person should use when they're driving a vehicle. Judge Willmore: You cannot believe the immense tragedy this case caused in so many people's lives. TERRYL WARNER, VICTIM ADVOCATE Terryl Warner: The fact that he killed two men, that has to be such a difficult burden and I think he's a very, very good kid who did just a really dumb thing. Ed Shaw: He's going to jail, Cache County Jail. Terryl Warner: To Reggie, who's never been away from home unless it was for something positive, everyday will seem like an eternity for him. He will be in general population so he will be with people that have long criminal histories. Don, Prosecuting Attorney: He will be around some very unsavory people. Their basic accommodations are about an 8 by 5 foot space. Terryl Warner: We worked out a deal where Reggie had to go in to different schools and do a presentation on the dangers of texting and driving. Reggie: Ok I was texting and driving. I was 19 years old. I thought it was safe. I thought it was something that I could do. That I could drive down the road and send a text message and be safe and drive just fine, not hurt anybody. I crossed the centerline; two men killed. Mary Jane Shaw: You don't want to have to get up every morning and go to bed every night thinking of a tragic accident that maybe you could have prevented or not caused. It could be you, it could be anybody that gets hurt...and I just suggest, don't use your phone when you drive. You don't want to live with that. Jackie: Well, before the incident I was married with two kids and after he died, I mean, I was a single parent. You know that camaraderie of being together is gone and I mean, we were going to grow old together and retire and all these things and that's not going to happen. I mean, he's not going to be there when they get married, you know, he won't be walking them down the aisle. He won't be, you know, all those things that dads typically do, he's not going to be there to do. Leila: Every decision was made together. What if, you know, he wanted something special from the grocery store or if we were planning a trip it was just always done together. He was everything for me. John Kaiserman: It's been hard on my family...extremely hard on my children. For a parent, when you get up in the morning and walk out the door and your 10 year-old says, "Be careful, daddy..." we would think life should be reversed, that we should be telling our children, as they walk out the door, you know, you be careful, you be safe, but my children fear for my life everyday as I leave still. Judge Willmore: Having seen this tragedy I have made sure that I don't answer my cell phone and try to make it so I'm not driving distracted and I've also encouraged everyone that I can within my family to avoid that type of situation, because it's just an immense tragedy that occurred. Reggie: If you choose to text and drive, you might be fine one day, next day you're gonna be right here in the same seat. You're going be hanging out with these same people, having the same thoughts I'm having. You don't want that. You don't want to go through these things. Leila: Driving is a privilege not a right. You have to take care of every minute when you're driving to be responsible for every move you make with that vehicle because it is a deadly weapon. Jackie: It does. It takes a split second and you don't even think about it you think, "I can do this," but you are, you are risking yourself and others and it's not worth it 'cause no text is that important. REGGIE SHAW RECEIVED 100 HOURS PUBLIC SERVICE PLUS 30 DAYS IN JAIL HE WAS UTAH'S LAST TEXTING DRIVER TO RECEIVE SUCH A LIGHT SENTENCE UNDER UTAH'S CURRENT TEXTING LAW: TEXTING OR EMAILING WHILE DRIVING IS PUNISHABLE BY UP TO A $750 FINE AND UP TO 90 DAYS IN JAIL CAUSING INJURY TO ANOTHER PERSON IS PUNISHABLE BY UP TO A $1,000 FINE AND UP TO 6 MONTHS IN JAIL CAUSE A FATALITY AND YOU MAY RECEIVE A FINE OF UP TO $10,000 AND UP TO 15 YEARS IN PRISON