For the victims’ families, the nightmare goes on and on

It’s been 10 months since the accident, but for James Rousseau the horror never ends.

The sound of the crash, the image of his bloodied girlfriend’s body and the feeling of holding his baby boy, lifeless in his arms, is a nightmare that replays whenever he closes his eyes.

Rousseau was driving along Sterling Road in Lancaster on April 22 last year when police say a drunk driver crashed into his vehicle, killing his 21-year-old pregnant girlfriend Katelyn DiSessa. Emergency personnel performed a Caesarian section, delivering his baby boy, James Jr.

“He had a heartbeat when he came out, but then he died,” Rousseau said.

He got to hold his son’s lifeless body for a few moments.

But 10 months later, Rousseau continues to live the horror of that night. At least once a month he heads to Clinton District Court to face the man accused of killing his family. David Zoller, a 33-year-old Littleton lumberyard worker who raced mountain bikes and had no prior criminal history, could face 30 years for the deaths police say he caused in that deadly crash. Then again, he could get far less.

Last month, Michael Howe, a 33-year-old from Hudson with a wife and young child, was sentenced to two and half years for driving drunk and killing former Clintonian Joseph “Tootie” O’Toole last June. Howe pleaded guilty and took the two and a half year sentence.

That’s the way the court goes,” said Heather Hansen, of Clinton, O’Toole’s daughter. “We have to accept it. Nothing we do will bring my dad back. Three years for taking his life is nothing. We have to grieve for the rest of our lives and he’s got two years.”

Cause and effect
The heavy load of losing a loved one in a violent crash of metal takes its toll not only in the moments and weeks after an accident, but in the months and years.

Rousseau’s life has been a hard road since last April.

He just recently stopped taking heavy sedatives to help him sleep at night. A few weeks after the accident, he returned to his job at the Sunoko station on Main Street in Clinton, but it didn’t last. There were problems.

“I kept leaving early,” Rousseau said. “He [the owner] said enough’s enough. Either you leave or I’m going to have to fire you.”

Then he took a job working hard labor in Maine. That didn’t last either.

His motorcycle was repossessed, and then his truck. He’s trying to hold onto a dirt bike that he and DiSessa went to pick up the day of the accident.

“The repo guy has been putting us off for more than two weeks now because he knows what happened,” Rousseau said. “I’m just going to give it up next weekend and we’ll go from there. He said he’ll hold it for 30 days if I can come up with the money.”
Rousseau just started a new job doing inspections on trucks. He works more than 45 hours a week and tries to keep his emotions at bay, but they’re never far below the surface, slipping from overwhelming sorrow, to emptiness and to rage.

“Everything has changed. Everything,” Rousseau said. “Everywhere I go, even today, tomorrow, the next day, every day, it’s just not right, it just doesn’t seem right. It’s not like it was before.”

The process
Rousseau appeared in Clinton District Court Tuesday to give a statement as part of the civil suit he’s bringing against Zoller. It’s a process his attorney told him could take five years. The criminal case against Zoller continues to wend its way through court with pretrial hearings and conferences. Zoller’s attorneys are currently seeking to get computer information from the vehicles in order to analyze it. No trial date has yet been set.

For the O’Toole family, at least the court process is over.

“That was the hardest part,” Hansen said. “Having to appear month after month and having to go through it over and over again.”

O’Toole’s death impacted a lot of people in the area. A native Clintonian who moved to Hawaii, he was visiting for his grandson’s graduation when the crash occurred.

O’Toole left three brothers and three sisters behind in addition to his daughter and grandsons and other close relatives.

“He loved the town,” Hansen said. “He loved the people in it. He knew everybody here. He was brought up here. He went to school here. He had a lot of friends. He had a lot of people that loved him.”

Hansen said having the court process over is somewhat of a relief, but it doesn’t take away the pain of the loss of her father.

“I’ll want to pick up the phone and talk to him — and I can’t,” Hansen said.

A ‘good’ sentence?
In a cloud of anger and grief, Rousseau has a hard time thinking about what kind of sentence for the accused drunken driver would bring some sense of satisfaction.

“Nobody should get away with killing someone and serving only two and a half years,” Rousseau said. “I think anything more than 10 years is a little more respectable, but anything under 10 years that’s absolutely ridiculous.”

But then the rage kicks in.

“Things like this, there should be a death penalty, period,” an angry Rousseau said. “There should be no questions asked.”

Of course, in a trial, there’s a possibility Zoller will be found not guilty. It’s not something Rousseau is even prepared to think about at the moment.

The other side
The Rousseaus aren’t the only ones waiting. Zoller and his parents continue to wait to find out whether he will walk free or spend years behind bars. Each month, Zoller has to face the family. And it doesn’t always go smoothly. At a court appearance last Friday, DiSessa’s father could be seen a few feet away from Zoller reportedly saying “remember this face.”

Rousseau’s mother, Denise, said she can see the toll it’s taken on Zoller’s parents as she looks across at them at the hearings each month.

As a mother who’s sat on the other side — her son John was accused of arson and was looking at prison time before the case was dropped last year — she said the waiting just wears on you.

And then there are the other family members.

Rousseau’s youngest brother was in counseling after the deaths and it appeared to be going well, Denise Rousseau said.

After one session, the counselor told Denise “we were just talking about something and out of the blue he said, ‘that night at the hospital all I wanted to do was to go home and eat broccoli and cheese, does that mean I love food more than I loved her?’ And she said, ‘no, that was your body saying I want to be somewhere else.’”

In the meantime, family members just try to steal moments of peace here and there.
“There isn’t a day or moment that goes by that you stop thinking,” Hansen said. “You keep thinking day after day. You’re fine one second and then all of a sudden it hits you and you’re crying and you just can’t stop. That’s what kills you the most. Just trying to hold on.”

(Noah R. Bombard can be reached at nbombard@cnc.com or at 978-365-8040)