August 31, 2009
 
"My Meg is gone, and I keep asking her to come home to Mommy and she doesn't," Margaret Smith said to Catherine Roberts.

By Jamie Nash

CONROE- Memories are all Doug and Margaret Smith have left of their 18-year-old daughter Meghann, whose life was taken by a drunk driver on Oct. 26, 2008.
 
On Saturday, during their gut wrenching victim's impact statement, the heartbroken parents told the woman convicted of causing Meghann's death that they hoped she too would think of Meghann every day, and of the decision she made to drink and then get behind the wheel on that fateful night.
 
Friday evening, a jury in the 435th District Court of Judge Michael T. Seiler found 47-year-old Catherine Roberts of Patton Village guilty of intoxicated manslaughter and failure to stop and render aid. The next day, that jury sentenced Roberts to 10 years on each count, to be served consecutively. She will be eligible for parole in 30 months.
 
After the sentence was pronounced, the Smith's had the opportunity to tell Roberts about Meghann, the pedestrian who she struck and then drove away, one month after the girl's eighteenth birthday.
 
Doug "Smitty" Smith spoke first. He began by telling Roberts both sides lost dearly and both families had suffered and both families lost something.
 
"I just have one question for you," Smitty said. "Was it worth it?"
 
Twice during his statement, Smitty told Roberts, "Drinking and driving is a choice."
 
He chastised her about testimony that said the friend she was with earlier was also drunk, but decided not to drive. He told her the people of Montgomery County had "spoken" by finding her guilty.
 
"You mad a bad decision - the wrong choice," Smitty said. "Unfortunately, Meghann doesn't have a choice and you'll never be able to tell Meghann how sorry you are."
 
"One day you'll get out and go back to your family, and Meghann will never get out," he said. "Your decision put her there."
 
"She'll never leave the grave. She'll never have children. She'll never be married. We'll never have another Christmas together. We'll never have a birthday party, we'll never go on a picnic, because she's no longer here," Smitty said. "Again I ask you, was it worth it?"
 
Roberts shook her head "no" as she did the first time he asked that question.
 
Margaret Smith, Meghann's mother, first read a statement on behalf of their remaining daughter, Shannon, who was too distraught to speak to Roberts. Not only was Saturday Shannon's birthday, it was the first without her little sister.
 
"I never thought I would be going through this nightmare," she began.
 
The statement discussed how close the sisters were, how they did everything together and comforted one another when things went wrong.
 
"She was always going through my clothes," Shannon wrote,"The night she was killed, she was wearing my top."
Margaret continued, showing amazing strength and somehow managing to read the statement by her older daughter about the loss of her baby daughter, with a strong and clear voice and without having to stop.
 
"Dad always told us that after him and Mom go, it was just going to be me and Meghann and he wanted us to keep that love between us tight," she wrote. "Now I am all alone."
 
"My best friend, thanks to you Catherine Roberts, is gone," Margaret read. "I hope you have images of what you did to my sister for the rest of your life."
 
Less than two months after Meghann's death, Shannon had the baby the sisters had been so excited about. Meghann was going to be her niece's godmother.
 
"You are a liar, Catherine Roberts, and you're going to jail where you belong so you can't do this to another family," Shannon wrote. "You don't know how it feels to have your heart ripped out."
 
The statement said Shannon had been sick since her sister's death and Margaret Smith also mentioned the physical toll it took on her older daughter.
 
"Every day is getting harder and harder without Meghann here," she wrote. "I love and miss you Meghann."
 
Margaret Smith then told Catherine Roberts how she felt.
 
"I am the proud mother of Meghann Marie smith," she began.
 
Margaret said for six months she would open the victim impact statement booklet and then feel nauseous and close it when she read the title. When she finally started to fill out the paperwork, she said she shook so badly that she was unable to write and would again put it away, because she did not want to do it.
 
"You see, Catherine Roberts, I am having a hard time accepting that she is not coming back," Margaret said. "I was not called to the scene- I did not get to look at her in the funeral home because you messed up my beautiful baby so much."
"You took away her dreams."
 
Margaret said she realized she was not the only parent to lose a child to a drunk driver and was not alone in her pain and grief.
 
"When you get that knock on the door is when your hell begins and you are never the same," she said. "Meghan was my baby and it was not your choice to take her away, but Catherine Roberts you made it your choice when you chose to drink and drive."
 
"I ask God to give me strength every day to help me put one foot in front of the other because waking up to a new day is no longer," Margaret said.
 
"I try to be strong, I try to help others but I'm hurting so badly because you see, Catherine Roberts, that's what Mommy's do."
 
"You took my baby, murdered her, and left her lying there and left," she said. "How could you do that to my baby?"
 
She said her daughter loved animals and would always bring home strays, including her beloved schnauzer, Paris Anna Nicole Smith, who she called her baby. Margaret said Meghann's dog had also suffered and was not the same.
 
She read a poem she wrote for her daughter, comparing he to a perfect red rose that inspired her, then Margaret told Roberts that she lost her own sister and best friend to cancer last week during the trial.
 
Margaret Smith said she found comfort in knowing Meghann was with her aunt.
 
Of the conviction, Doug "Smitty" Smith later said he was pleased at how law enforcement and the District Attorney's Office have begun to crack down on the DWI epidemic in Montgomery County.
 
He was especially pleased with the efforts of prosecutor Jim Prewitt in securing a guilty verdict.
 
"The days of drinking and driving in Montgomery County are over," Smitty said. "If you want to drink and drive, you'd better go somewhere else