Woman who killed Arlington man in drunk driving crash gets probation in plea deal
The woman who on New Year’s Day 2019 killed Timothy Shorter while driving drunk in Arlington pleaded guilty Friday to intoxication manslaughter.
Elizabeth Stratton was sentenced to 10 years’ probation, as she and Tarrant County prosecutors agreed to a plea deal that Shorter’s family called insulting, “disrespectful to the loss of life” and a mockery of the justice system.
“Today I am just coming to terms that this is not a nightmare,” Shorter’s daughter Kyanna Virgil told Stratton during victim impact statements, called allocutions, that followed the sentencing. “You took his life.”
Some of Shorter’s family members told the Star-Telegram following the sentencing hearing that they felt the plea deal was a sign that the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office didn’t care about Shorter’s life or the pain his family has gone through since his death. They also said they had seen nothing to lead them to believe that Stratton had any remorse for the crash that killed the 47-year-old man while he was on his way to work.
Stratton’s attorneys said in a statement to the Star-Telegram on Friday that Stratton “can never effectively communicate the depth of her grief for the loss to both hers and Mr. Shorter’s families.”
“She has accepted responsibility for her actions on that fateful morning and will live with the consequences for the rest of her life,” attorneys Reagan Wynn, Frank Sellers and Greg Westfall said in the statement on Stratton’s behalf.
But three of Shorter’s relatives, who spoke to Stratton for about 20 minutes during the allocutions, said that’s not enough.
“We are here today because of your asinine and negligent actions,” Timothy Shorter’s wife, Yolanda Shorter, told Stratton. “You don’t get to be sorry. You need to be accountable.”
Timothy Shorter’s relatives said after the hearing that he was a man who cared about family above all else. Because of the unique relationships he had with each person in his family, his cousin Corlis Shorter-Fitzpatrick said, his death has devastated too many relatives to count. Many in the family said the death of Leon Shorter, Timothy Shorter’s father, on Sunday was a result of grief at the loss of his eldest son.
That Sunday would have been Timothy Shorter and Yolanda Shorter’s 18th anniversary.
“You took my children’s father away and left them fatherless,” Yolanda Shorter told Stratton. “You took away my husband and left me widowed. Instead of celebrating our 18th wedding anniversary together ... I shed tears for missing my best friend, my protector and my provider. Shame on you.”
The impacts are also still being felt by Timothy Shorter’s mother and stepmother, Lavenia Shorter and Ruby Jewel Shorter. Shorter-Fitzpatrick said it was important to note that Timothy Shorter saw both women as his mother.
“There was no ‘step’ in Tim’s mind,” Shorter-Fitzpatrick said. “There was no half sibling or step anything.”
Timothy Shorter was the kind of man who was at every birthday celebration and every graduation, for his siblings, children, cousins and every other relative. He was a man who family members knew they could count on for support in any form. He was the kind of person who everybody paid attention to whenever he had something to say, they said.
“When Timothy spoke, there was nothing but peace,” Shorter-Fitzpatrick said. “Everybody got real quiet and paid attention to what he had to say.”
Cosetta Phillips, Shorter’s cousin, said he was a “beautiful, beautiful soul.”
“It is my sincere prayer that for the rest of your life you are filled with remorse,” Phillips told Stratton during allocution. “I hoped you would go to jail. ... But since I have to accept that you will get to go on living and enjoying your life, I want to make sure you remember every day that you are responsible for taking a life.”
As a condition of her probation, 485th District Court Judge Steven Jumes told Stratton during sentencing that she will be required for the next four years to spend three days in jail for Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve. While normally Jumes said restitution payments would be part of the probation requirements, he waived that because Stratton had already been ordered to pay Shorter’s family $15 million in a civil court and he did not want restitution payments to get in the way of the family receiving that money.
If Stratton violates her probation, Jumes warned she will likely be sentenced to 20 years in prison, the maximum sentence for intoxication manslaughter.
Stratton also pleaded true to a charge of unlicensed possession of a firearm for a gun found in the vehicle she was driving while intoxicated when she caused the crash.
