It was a matter of only six seconds.
Six seconds was how long the light had been red. Six seconds before that, Edward Brooks should have stopped his vehicle, and those six seconds could have saved Elizabeth Comtois’ life.
Brooks was sentenced Tuesday, Dec. 9, to three months in jail for running a light that had been red for six seconds and striking Comtois’ vehicle, causing injuries that proved to be fatal. According to the district attorney’s office, Brooks had been rushing to get to a meeting at Wal-mart.
In addition to the three months, Brooks was sentenced to five years probation, 500 hours of community service and the loss of his license for five years.
The accident that ultimately killed Comtois, 62, of Latham, occurred on Memorial Day at the intersection of Route 9 and Kunker Avenue.
[Brooks] ran a red light, and when he ran the light, Comtois was turning in a turning lane, said Heather Orth, director of communications in the district attorney’s office.
On that day, Brooks’ vehicle struck Comtois’ in a T-bone fashion, leaving her with physical injuries for which she was treated at Albany Medical Center.
Comtois later died of her injuries on Monday, June 8.
`The situation here is, everybody in the beginning thought this was just an accident, but the more they looked into it, it was more than an accident,` said Orth.
According to Orth, the Colonie Police Department was able to reconstruct the accident and determined that the light that Brooks ran had been red for six seconds. Because the light was red for so long, Orth said the district attorney was able to charge Brooks with criminally negligent homicide.
`He saw that the light was changing and didn’t stop. It was negligence that caused him to hit her, and it led to her death,` she said.
Even though Brooks’ charge includes the word `criminal,` the man who lost his wife in the accident refuses to categorize the man as a criminal.
`Had I decided to go to court, there is a possibility he could have gotten second-degree manslaughter, in which he would have had to serve five to 15 years,` said Rene Comtois, widower of Elizabeth. `But if I had to do that, I would have made him a criminal. He looked like a simple man.`
Instead of going to court, Comtois decided to meet with Brooks and his attorneys to reach a plea bargain. No alcohol or drugs were involved in the accident, Comtois said. Had there been, he would have gone to court to fight for a harsher sentence. But, Comtois said, there were no easy answers.
`To me, he got a five-year sentence,` said Comtois. `We got a lifetime sentence. There were no winners.`
Comtois referred to impact statements his children gave at the time of the plea bargain, explaining that his children had a different take on the sentencing than he did.
His son, Tom Comtois, wrote, `In a matter of seconds you destroyed what my parents worked for their whole lives and created a lifetime of painful memories for our family and friends. You killed my mother and robbed her of her lifelong dreams. You have no idea what it is like to hold your mother’s ashes in your hand and know that they were once your mother’s flesh as you feel the tiny gritty fragments in the ashes that were once your mother’s bones. You have no idea what it is like to cry so hard that you can’t breathe.`
The Comtois’ daughter, Renee Martin, also had a message for Brooks: `I want to be really angry, mad and hateful toward you, although I know in my heart that it is not the right thing to do. I know that you did not wake up on Memorial Day and plan to take someone’s life, however I’m sure my mother didn’t wake up that day and plan for her life to be over.`
Orth said she hopes that others will be able to learn a valuable lesson from this case.
`There was nothing intentional. He didn’t wake up that day and say, ‘You know, I’m going to kill someone.’ It’s something that occurred,` she said. `We’re all in a rush all the time, and everybody knows someone who’s run a red light. The message here is the lights aren’t here as a guideline ` they’re here because if you run them, you kill people.`
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