Punishment needs to fit crime, mother of Missouri hit-and-run victim says

Stacey Stevens knows few details about her son’s violent death on a Missouri highway.

“I know his shoes were found a football field’s length away from his body,” she said of the teen who loved laughter, animals and Chinese food.

What haunts her most involves what she doesn’t know.

Why didn’t the driver who hit 19-year-old Matthew Stevens from behind see him in the morning darkness in Neosho last September?

Was that motorist doing something that distracted or impaired him?

After hitting her son so hard, and damaging his car so severely, why did he keep driving?

Two agonizing weeks later, a 61-year-old Neosho businessman turned himself in to police. He thought he’d hit a deer, he said.

Prosecutors charged him with leaving the scene of an accident, a Class D felony.

Still, Stacey Stevens finds justice as elusive as answers to her many questions.

When it comes to paying for their actions after killing someone, hit-and-run drivers — responsible for a fifth of pedestrian fatalities nationwide — get away with too much, she believes.

By leaving the scene, they deprive investigators of crucial evidence, including a timely interview and the chance to determine impairment. If drivers are impaired, leaving helps them escape a harsher penalty.

That’s why Stevens hopes to testify in April before Missouri lawmakers considering a bill to stiffen penalties in such cases involving death or serious injuries.

It’s also why she launched an online petition campaign last Thanksgiving urging tougher penalties and mandatory driver’s license revocations. She set a goal of 25,000 signatures. More than 137,000 people have signed.

In Missouri, drivers convicted in fatal hit-and-run cases currently face up to four years in prison, a $5,000 fine or a combination of both. Even though the penalties are scheduled to increase in January, the levels still will not be high enough, Stevens says.

If hit-and-run motorists faced a stiffer sentence, perhaps they would pull over rather than flee, she says.

If they faced a stiffer fine, perhaps victims’ families would feel less sting.

After all, $5,000 isn’t much for taking a life, Stevens says.

“It cost me $10,000 to bury my child,” she said recently while standing next to a white cross bearing her son’s name planted alongside a four-lane divided state highway in southwest Missouri.

She realizes that any law change will come too late in her son’s case, which must be handled under laws in place when he died.

But that doesn’t deter her.

“This is not just about a mother’s revenge,” she said. “But the law is rewarding people who leave the scene. …

“I’m a licensed clinical social worker, and part of my job is to look at injustice and advocate for change. This is an injustice for all Missouri families, not just mine.”

A ringing phone woke Stevens at 5 a.m. Sept. 12.

It was her ex-husband calling. A car had hit Matthew, he said.

Stevens scrambled out of bed and began grabbing clothes to dress and rush to a hospital.

“Stacey,” her ex-husband said, “Matthew is dead.”

Six months later, retelling that moment remains hard. Her voice halts. She apologizes for the pause before composing herself.

“Those are the worst words that I ever heard,” she said.

Matthew, her first born, was special.

Diagnosed at age 7 with Asperger’s syndrome and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, he possessed a photographic memory and a strong prankster gene that he used often to elicit laughter.

He also loved learning. The summer after fourth grade, he read an entire set of encyclopedias. An academic all-star in school for his test scores, he had learned German and was studying Japanese.

But he found difficult some things that his Neosho High School peers enjoyed. Including driving.

Although he obtained a driver’s learner permit, he grew nervous whenever his car’s tires hit pavement grooves that warn drivers they’ve drifted toward a roadway shoulder.

“So he walked everywhere,” his mother said.

He died four blocks from home, in a 45-mph zone at the intersection of Malcolm Mosby Drive and Missouri 59, just after 1 a.m. on a Saturday morning while walking home from his girlfriend’s residence.

Neosho police officers identified him through his learner’s permit.

An autopsy indicated that a vehicle struck him from behind.

His family passed out fliers begging witnesses to come forward.

About two weeks later, police announced they had interviewed a Neosho resident and recovered a 2001 Ford Escape with extensive front-end damage. Oren Rea Rinehart had turned himself in through an attorney he had contacted two days after the wreck, police said.

According to court records, Rinehart admitted hitting Matthew Stevens while driving home. He did not notify police, he said, because he thought he had hit a deer.

Learning otherwise upset Rinehart, according to his lawyer, Charles Rhoades.

“When Rea came in to see me, he was very distraught,” Rhoades said.

“He said somebody had been hit by a car out on that stretch of highway, and he realized he had been driving that highway two nights before and thought that he had hit a deer.

“Once he realized that he might be responsible, he wanted to turn himself in.”

Rinehart pleaded not guilty in February. A pretrial conference is scheduled for April 25.

The deer story bothers Stacey Stevens.

“If you think you’ve hit a deer, you still stop,” she said. “You still call the police. You call your insurance company.”

The scene where Matthew Stevens died is not far from a bar, which prompted his family to wonder whether the driver had visited it before the wreck.

But there’s no evidence of that, said Newton County Prosecutor Jake Skouby.

“We have our speculations as to what happened at 1 a.m. on a Saturday morning, but speculation isn’t evidence,” Skouby said.

“All we have at this point is the death of the young individual. Mr. Rinehart has indicated that he was behind the wheel when Mr. Stevens died.”

The maximum fine for leaving the scene is to increase to $10,000 on Jan. 1, said Jason Lamb, executive director of the Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys. Fine increases across the board were part of a recent criminal code revision approved by the Missouri General Assembly.

A bill submitted in February by state Rep. Bill Reiboldt of Neosho would upgrade leaving the scene to a Class C felony if a death occurs. Under an imprisonment schedule that also takes effect Jan. 1, Class C felony convictions will carry prison terms of three to 10 years.

Reiboldt hopes Stacey Stevens will get to tell her story to lawmakers in April.

“I have some trial lawyers who have told me they don’t like it (the bill), and they are already saying there is enough leeway in the system,” Reiboldt said.

Legislators may ask Stevens about her son’s Asperger’s and ADHD, and whether he was taking any medication.

Stevens said she is ready for those questions.

“He was happy,” she said. “He didn’t willingly walk out into traffic.”

Skouby supports Stevens’ efforts to upgrade the penalties for convictions. Current law, he says, appears to consider leaving the scene after causing physical injury the same as leaving after causing $1,000 worth of property damage.

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense, and I think the legislators will see that,” Skouby said.

Before her son’s death, Stevens had lived part time in Neosho and part time in Bentonville, Ark., which put her closer to her social work job at a Rogers, Ark., clinic.

But the Neosho home sits only four blocks from the intersection where Matthew Stevens died. The accident scene is visible from its driveway.

“I can’t look at that every day,” said Stacey Stevens, who solved that heartache by selling the Neosho home.

She launched her petition drive at Change.org after reading on Facebook about a different petition. She also established a scholarship fund in her son’s name to help high school seniors diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder attend college.

“He was my baby,” Stevens said. “My first born. My heart. I always told him that he was one of the best things I ever did in my life, and he was.”

She misses his smile, his blue eyes, his hugs, his jokes and his laugh. His absence hits hardest late at night, before bed, and first thing each morning. After all, it was 5 a.m. when she learned he had died.

“I seem to wake up that time every morning, as if my body remembers,” Stevens said. “I know I have to move on with life, but sometimes I get lost. I was always Matthew and Nicholas’ mom. Now, I’m just Nicholas’ mom. It’s like I lost part of my identity when I lost him. …

“My son should’ve turned 20. He should’ve gotten to enroll at Crowder College like he wanted. He should’ve been allowed to grow up, get married and hold his own babies. My grandbabies. All of that is gone now. It was taken too soon.”

As the criminal case proceeds, Stevens doesn’t look forward to hearing some of the details from the medical examiner’s office. She has been told that the impact broke Matthew’s neck and a leg. It also caused an aortic tear, a catastrophic rupture impeding her son’s blood flow.

“I believe my son was dead before he hit the pavement,” she said. “He didn’t even have time to think about what had happened to him.

“And that is my only comfort.”

The Star’s Donna McGuire contributed to this report.

This story was originally published March 25, 2016 at 10:10 AM with the headline "Punishment needs to fit crime, mother of Missouri hit-and-run victim says."