Comatose and near death, Melissa lay in Frankford Hospital- Torresdale Campus for weeks after the January 2003 accident. One doctor attributed her recovery to the "plasticity" of her youthful brain; she was27 at the time. A roadside memorial marks the spot along Route 413 where the drunk driver hit their car.
- Seeking Jasta
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Seeking Jasta
A stunning tragedy took her daughter and her memory. Each day, she fights to get another bit of them back.
Melissa enrolled Jasta in Just Children, a preschool in Langhorne, and started working there herself, becoming a teacher, a job she loved.
In 2002, happier than she'd ever been, Melissa began dating Dan Jones, a house painter who lived in Philadelphia. Dan said he'd never waited so long to kiss a girl, but it was worth the wait. He began spending more time at Melissa's apartment in Levittown, and they were about to get a place together.
When Dan called her that January night in 2003, telling her that his friend was too drunk to drive him home, Melissa put Jasta into the car seat and headed north on 413, where she waited for the arrow to turn green at the entrance ramp to I-95.
It was 3:19 a.m.
The accident
Steven Williams, 23, had been drinking at a party in West Bristol - and arguing with his girlfriend, Tina Hauber."She was doing nothing but pestering me," he testified at his trial, "asking me why I broke up with her . . . and I just had to get away."
When he hopped into his Toyota pickup truck, she jumped in, too. She wanted to talk.
"Get out of my truck," he told her, according to his testimony. She denied he ever said that.
They took off driving through Lower Bucks County toward a Wawa for cigarettes and coffee.
Hauber told the court that she begged him to slow down. "At one point, I looked at the speedometer and it was over 100," she testified.
Finding the Wawa closed, he barreled south on 413. "I just wanted to get home and get on with my life," Williams testified.
At the I-95 ramp intersection, Williams said, the traffic light was yellow and he was going to "punch it" - hit the gas and beat the red light.
He said he never saw Melissa Sweeney's car beginning to turn left in front of him. Police said it was going less than one mile an hour when it was struck on the passenger side - T-boned - by his truck, right where Jasta was belted into her car seat. Police said he was going more than 80 miles per hour.
Williams walked out of his truck. His arm was broken in three places, and his head was bleeding from the windshield. He was not wearing a seat belt.
Hauber, with torn ligaments in her ankle and knee, testified that he approached her side of the truck. "He said he was sorry," she said, "and he told me to tell the cops that the light was green."
Which she did.
Two days later, after Tina Hauber heard that Jasta had died, she told police that the light had been red. "My daughter is about the same age," Hauber testified, "and I just felt so bad and so guilty that this little baby died."
Williams, whose blood-alcohol level was 0.17 percent - well over the legal limit - was convicted of homicide by vehicle while driving under the influence, among other charges, and sentenced to 41/2 to 10 years in prison.
Melissa's recovery
Jasta was airlifted by helicopter to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Melissa's mother, Donna Daubenspeck, who heard about the accident at 6 a.m., was holding her granddaughter's hand when she died just before noon. Jasta became one of 17,000 Americans who died in alcohol-related crashes that year.Melissa was taken by ambulance to Frankford Hospital-Torresdale Campus. With Melissa in a coma and the outlook grim, the family discussed whether to remove life support if she didn't get better.
