Indiana woman fights drunken driving after losing son

FORT WAYNE, Ind. — A Rochester woman who lost her son in a crash with a drunken driver in 2007 is working to ensure that other families don't endure a similar grief.

Christine Jones has helped lobby for new Indiana drunken driving laws and hopes to start a Mothers Against Drunk driving chapter in Fulton County in memory of her son, Jonathan Howard Kamp, who died Nov. 30, 2007, in the Kosciusko County crash.

Her crusade includes meeting with police officers in Rochester recently before they held drunken driving checkpoints and showing them photographs from the crash scene that depicted her son's covered body lying in the wreckage.

"I wanted them to know, 'Here's what it does,'" Jones said. "I don't want to hide anything. I think it made them understand that this is a personal thing."

Kamp, 28, was en route to Akron, Ohio, where he was moving, when his truck was broadsided by a Chevy Blazer driven by Leonard F. Williams after Williams ran a stop sign.

Kamp died at the scene, becoming one of 230 people killed in Indiana as a result of drunken driving in 2007.

Police said Williams had three previous drunken driving-related convictions and was on probation for another offense. He was convicted of his fourth drunken-driving offense and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Jones speaks about her experiences at victim-impact panels organized by Mothers Against Drunk Driving for first-time offenders. She helped lobby for a proposed state law that would have introduced ignition interlocks designed to keep people whose blood-alcohol level is too high from starting their cars. The bill ultimately failed.

But police say her efforts are making a difference.

Indiana State Police Sgt. Tony Slocum said seeing Jones' pain nearly two years after her son's death reminded troopers why sobriety checkpoints matter.

More than 12,000 Indiana drivers were involved in alcohol-related collisions last year. Of those, 3,411 had a blood-alcohol content of 0.08 percent or higher.

"It's always a big deal," Slocum said. "It just emphasizes that this is important."