DWI crash that resulted in murder conviction is recalled 11 years later

They both saw the headlights and sensed something bad was about to happen.

Brent and Julie Jones were in their Chevy Tahoe on Airport Freeway when they encountered a wrong-way driver, Jake Aaron Strickland, who was drunk.

Julie Jones, who was driving, said she remembers that Strickland was coming toward them, fast.

Too fast.

“My husband’s last words to me were, ‘Hey, that car…, ’” Julie Jones said.

Strickland crashed his 1995 Isuzu Rodeo into the passenger side of the Tahoe, killing Brent Jones, 37, leaving behind Julie and two infant twins, Lauren and Jacob.

Strickland, who had two previous driving while intoxicated convictions, became the first person in Tarrant County to be convicted of murder in a fatality involving DWI.

Since the crash on Dec. 21, 2003, Julie Jones said the vision of those headlights and the memory of her husband’s death persist, in daydreams and nightmares — and especially during the holidays.

“Many people think drinking and driving is no big deal, but to our family it’s a very big deal,” said Julie Jones, 47. “Losing a loved one to such a senseless act is something you don't just get over. Rather, you adjust to it.”

She has done her best to keep her husband’s memory alive, speaking to high school and college students about the dangers of drinking and driving, about being responsible, about having a Plan B to return home, so that they don’t do to some other family what Strickland did to them.

But she also encountered personal struggles, including a diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension, a condition that causes the vessels carrying blood to the lungs to harden and narrow. The condition causes the heart to work faster and can eventually lead to heart failure. There is no cure, according to the American Lung Association.

“Some people last months, years,” Jones said. “I hope to live long enough to be at their weddings, to see their babies. But I don’t think I’ll live to be an old woman.”

A landmark case

Julie Jones said she feels blessed that she survived the crash to raise her children, now 11 years old.

They were 9 months old when they lost their father and now worry about losing their mother and their grandmother, Jones said. Her daughter, Lauren, in particular, does not like being separated from her mother, Jones said.

Lauren wants to know who will tell her if Jones dies while she’s at school.

“I want them to enjoy the time we have together and not live in fear, but she does,” Jones said

Lauren, the oldest twin by 20 seconds, said she does not understand why some people who have been arrested or had a wreck because they were drunk continue to drink and drive.

Strickland had twice been convicted of DWI when he got drunk at a downtown Fort Worth nightclub, headed the wrong way down East Belknap Street and entered Airport Freeway.

After a high-profile trial, he was sentenced to 35 years in prison, a decision that was later upheld by 2nd Court of Appeals.

Since Strickland’s conviction, more than a dozen repeat offender drunk drivers have been charged with murder in Tarrant County, said Richard Alpert, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case.

“I think about the case every time I drive to work because the route I take into downtown is the same one that Julie and her husband were taking,” said Alpert. “I hope the coverage of this case, the sentence Strickland received, and the impact it had on the Jones family will serve as a wake-up call to all citizens of Tarrant County to behave responsibly this holiday season.”

The Jones family also reached a $1.2 million out-of-court settlement with City Streets, the now-closed bar that had allowed Strickland to leave with a blood-alcohol content of .20 — 2 1/2 times the legal limit of .08.

‘I miss him a lot’

Lauren said her father’s death has sensitized her to the concept that her mother and her grandmother could also be taken away from her.

“I miss him a lot,” Lauren said. “I think it’s good that we never got a chance to meet him because that would make me miss him more.”

Lauren’s brother, Jacob, said not having their father around makes it difficult to celebrate the holidays. On Father’s Day and their father’s birthday, the family gathers for a balloon release in his honor, Jacob said. They also place flowers at his gravesite, Jacob said.

“When we were 8 or 9 we would go to the Warm Place,” Jacob said. “It’s a place for people who have lost their family members. We would do activities that would remind us of him, like draw pictures of him. It was nice to be there and be with others who had the same problems as I did.”

The family sometimes stays at a hotel during the holidays, Julie Jones said, one of the traditions she created to help her children get to know their father and ease the pain of their loss, she said.

“I try to get us away during the holidays and make something joyful out of it,” Jones said.

There is a phone that retains their father’s voice message that the children can call and talk to, Jones said. The balloon release and placing flowers by his grave are other ways the children have learned to honor their father, Jones said. When the balloons disappear into the sky, Jones tells her children that they have gone into heaven where their father can see them.

“They have learned an awful lot about their father as they have grown,” Jones said. “It’s a really rough road when someone is taken from you like this, but I can look back on it now and remember his laughter and his smile and be thankful for the blessings he left behind.”

‘I chose to forgive him’

Not all of the memories are pleasant.

That fateful night was the first time Jones had been out since the birth of their twins, and she can still see their green Chevrolet Tahoe crumpled beyond recognition.

“After the collision Brent was leaning against the door frame and I was calling his name but he didn’t answer,” Julie Jones said. “My ribs were broken, and I couldn’t reach him at first. When I did reach him I kept patting him but he wasn’t moving. I kept asking the paramedics to get someone to help him and they told me that someone else was working on it. Then they put me in the ambulance with Strickland.”

Strickland, who was 25 at sentencing, is now 35 and serving his sentence at the Darrington Prison Unit in Rosharon, about 32 miles south of Houston.

He will be eligible for parole on June 20, 2021.

Julie Jones attended several of the pretrial hearings for Strickland, even though prosecutors told her it was unnecessary, that she would not hear most of what was said.

But Jones said she wanted her husband to be more than just a statistic to those who worked in the courthouse.

During one hearing her eyes locked with Strickland’s, and he kept his head down after that, Julie Jones said. Every time Jones was in the room, Strickland averted his eyes as if it hurt him to look at her pain. The sorrow reflected in Strickland’s actions made it easier for her to forgive him, she said.

“I chose to forgive him, not so much for him or myself but for my children,” Jones said. “I did not want them to grow up in an angry household. And I saw he was not a monster. He was just a kid who made a bad choice.”

Jones reads statistics about people who drink and drive with horror and astonishment, saying they cannot possibly realize the risks they are taking with their own lives and the lives of others.

“I really don’t think that they realized what they were missing until we went to kindergarten and they saw all the other families,” Julie Jones said. “My daughter looks at a father-daughter dance and sees the void.”

This story was originally published December 27, 2014 at 4:11 PM with the headline "DWI crash that resulted in murder conviction is recalled 11 years later."