2 give talk on perils of drinking, driving

'I made a prisoner of myself for life,' an inmate told the students.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
CHAMPION -- Two prisoners -- one charged with aggravated vehicular homicide in an accident that killed her daughter, another charged with aggravated vehicular assault in a crash that made her best friend a quadriplegic -- urged vocational students not to drink and drive.
Sonja L. Milini, 32, of Canton, is scheduled to be in the Trumbull Correctional Institution until September 2007 after receiving a five-year sentence in the death of her daughter, Ronnie.
Stacy R. Hoover, 31, also of Canton, is to be released Jan. 22 from TCI, where she is serving a year for the accident that severely disabled her friend, Rosanna Neff. Hoover and Neff are still best friends, and Hoover said she intends to be a caregiver for the injured woman after she leaves prison.
Appearing shackled and clad in orange prison garb, Milini and Hoover gave a graphic presentation Friday to two assemblies of about 400 students each at the Trumbull Career and Technical Center.
"I couldn't accept the blame and the shame that I was feeling and the guilt, knowing that, due to my actions, I killed my 8-year-old daughter," Milini said of her state of mind when she entered the prison system at Marysville on Sept. 10, 2002.
Physical injuries
Milini, who said she drove after drinking two shots and half a beer, suffered multiple broken bones and an aneurysm and spent a month in an induced coma after the Oct. 26, 2001, accident, which occurred on U.S. Route 30 in Minerva.
"You guys are young and you guys have a chance to make something of yourselves. ... I just don't want to see you young people going through the same thing I went through and that I'm going through now. This is a lifelong thing. I made a prisoner of myself for life," she said.
During Milini's talk, pictures were projected on the screen showing her with her three children before the accident, herself on life support in the hospital after the accident, her daughter in her coffin, and her daughter's grave marker.
"I'll never be able to watch her grow up or have kids or see her smiling face and the twinkle in her eyes," Milini said. "It's just not worth it to go out and drink and drive," she said. Those who drink should find a sober driver, she said.
"When you drink anything [alcoholic], you shouldn't drive," echoed Hoover, a former bartender. "It doesn't matter if you have a beer or if you have 15 beers."
Numerous victims
Hoover had been drinking with her best friend before the accident in which her car hit a guardrail at about 40 mph on the rainy and foggy night of Nov. 17, 2004, on Interstate 77 southbound, breaking her friend's neck and paralyzing her from her shoulders down.
"The guilt that I have outweighs this prison" sentence, said Hoover, whose blood alcohol level was almost three times the legal limit after the accident. "She has an 8-year-old daughter that she can no longer hold," Hoover said of her friend.
"It's an awful thing when you have to call your best friend your victim," she observed. "Her daughter is now a victim of my crime. Her husband, her mother, her father" are also victims, said Hoover. "All that could have been prevented if we'd just called somebody," or called a cab, Hoover said.
milliken@vindy.com