DWI tragedy hits TV

Hours before 7-year-old Katie Flynn was killed in a drunken driving accident, she told her father that it was the best day of her life.

Her parents, Neil and Jennifer Flynn of Lido Beach, recall that horrific day in two 30-second public service videos about drunken driving produced by the state Department of Motor Vehicles that began airing on Monday. They feature video of Katie as a flower girl at her aunt's wedding, and the mangled vehicles on the Meadowbrook Parkway in which she and limousine driver Stanley Rabinowitz, 59, of Farmingdale, died early on the morning of July 2, 2005.

In one video, Jennifer recalls that Katie's head was torn from her body; in the other, Neil talks about having to live every day with the memories of that crash.

"I could smell smoke and I could taste blood, and I could hear my wife screaming, 'Katie's dead! Katie's dead!'" Neil says in the opening of one video. At the end of both announcements he asks viewers, "Could you live with yourself if you murdered my daughter?"

Video from a camera on the limousine dashboard shows the lights of a pickup truck, driven at high speed in the wrong direction on the parkway by Martin Heidgen of Valley Stream, veering toward the limo. Heidgen's blood-alcohol content was three times the legal limit.

The announcements will air statewide, on networks such as Fox News, for the next six to eight weeks. In addition, billboards will be posted throughout the state. The ads will be seen primarily upstate, since those markets offer more advertising space for public service announcements.

"As far as the PSAs are concerned, I think the TV stations have a certain number that they have to play anyway, so it's just a question of whether the people who are in charge of that think that this is an important message or not and how much they will play it," said Jackie McGinnis, director of DMV communications.

McGinnis said that the Flynns were hesitant to have the billboards posted on Long Island, where their other children would see them. "So there’ll be more billboards upstate then on Long Island," she said.

The state DMV said the public service spots were made after it evaluated research that found that repeat drunken drivers are deterred by viewing footage of horrific accidents. "People who think they can actually cause something like that accident is something we believe is more of a motivator to drive safely than to say, Just don't do it," McGinnis explained.

Neil Flynn said that Assistant Nassau County District Attorney Maureen McCormack, who was the prosecutor in the Heidgen case and is active in anti-drunken driving activities, approached the deputy director of the state's Traffic and Safety Committee, who contacted the Flynns about doing the announcements.

"The best thing that can come out of this is that nobody ever has to go through what we're going through every day," Flynn told the Herald. "Nobody has to suffer the loss of their beautiful little girl like we did."

Instead of manslaughter, the typical charge for a DWI fatality, Heidgen was charged with murder. So instead of facing a sentence ranging from probation to 15 years in prison, he was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 18 years to life in October 2006. His case is being appealed.

Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.