Renee Bower kisses her son, Ricky White, 19, as her sister, Buffy Crowder, prepares to feed him through a tube Friday at the Bower residence. (Melanie Duncan ThortisThe Vicksburg Post)

[2/15/04]Standing at the foot of her son’s bed, Renee Bower says she knows what a Warren County deputy sheriff’s family is going through as they wait for signs of improvement.

“He’s got a very long, hard journey ahead of him, and I feel sorry for his family,” Bower said.

Three months after a drunken driver’s car smashed into the car Bower’s son was a passenger in, the pain and anguish of her son’s injuries show on her face. Now, she says the man who drove into them shouldn’t be free on the streets.

“At first I wanted to know if he is going to be able to walk again, talk, say, I love you, mom,’ or even know mom, but they just don’t know,” Bower said.

On Nov. 18, Bower’s son, Ricky White, 19, was riding with his friend Jason Driver, 26, when the car they were traveling in was struck from the side by a 1991 Buick Roadmaster driven by Marcus L. Wells, 28, 217 Hillside Drive. Driver died from head injuries, and White was left in a coma for four weeks from his own head trauma.

A police report concluded that Driver had run a stop sign and Wells, who is on probation from a 2001 charge of business burglary, paid a fine for DUI first offense and was released. No other charges were filed.

“My son’s all he’s ever going to be,” Bower said

White’s injuries have left him confined to a bed, unable to care for himself, feed himself or even respond to others. He requires 24-hour-a-day care from his mother, aunt and 18-year-old girlfriend of three years Jessica Causey who has stayed by Bower’s side since the wreck.

White must be fed and given water through a tube. He has to undergo extensive rehabilitation and will need surgery on his feet if he is ever going to walk again.

With hospital bills topping $400,000, White has been brought from Methodist Rehabilitation Center in Jackson to their Openwood Plantation home where Bower, Causey and Bower’s sister, Buffy Crowder, take shifts, but what the trio say they want most is justice.

“What I’m upset about is the system,” Bower said. “If somebody is out there and a repeat offender and the court doesn’t know about it then someone’s not doing their job.”

When Deputy Sheriff Mike Hollingsworth was run down by a late-model Buick Monday, the driver, Ronald Vaughn, 23, was out on a $25,000 bond from an armed robbery four months earlier and was serving a five-year probation. Warren County District Attorney Gil Martin said that in both cases, with Vaughn and with Wells, his office, which prosecutes parole violations, was not made aware of those violations.

“Nobody’s really sure how that’s suppose to get to the probation officers,” Martin said. “The problem is that it’s out of our control.”

Assistant District Attorney Mike Bonner has filed a motion to revoke Vaughn’s probation and said he plans to ask the courts to revoke Wells’. Wells violated the terms of his probation with the DUI and by being out past curfew.

Bonner said he plans to ask Bower and Driver’s family to be present at the hearing for Wells.

“I don’t hate Marcus Wells, and I don’t wish him harm,” Bower said, but added that a fine isn’t sufficient to stop others from drinking and driving.

“It’s really hard for me as a mother seeing my child shrivel away,” she said.

Bower has had to quit her job as a sign artist and graphic designer to care for her son and has taken out a second mortgage on her home to pay bills. She said doctors can’t tell her if her son will ever fully recover.

“I’m going to keep going. I have to for him,” Bower said.

A benefit for White will be at noon today at The Game in Delta.