Family begs parole board to keep man locked up who killed 6-year-old in drunken car crash

UTAH STATE PRISON — A heartbroken family begged the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole Tuesday to keep locked up the man who killed a little boy four years ago in a drunken-driving rampage.

"The bottom line is that this man should be in jail for a lifetime" Desmond Smith, 15, said in urging the state not to grant a parole date to Tory Lee Jacques. "It won't bring Buddha back, it won't bring peace, but it's the closest we can come right now."

Then Desmond, who also was critically injured in the crash that killed 6-year-old Darius "Buddha" Smith, directed his comments to the inmate sitting before him.

"When you killed him, you didn't just kill my little brother, you killed my best friend," Desmond Smith said.

Cheryl Hansen, who presided over the hearing for the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole, detailed the crime for which Jacques was convicted of automobile homicide and two counts of DUI resulting in serious bodily injury.

Loaded on pain pills, marijuana, alcohol and cocaine, Jacques, then 21, angrily left his home the night of Oct. 25, 2003, and took his mother's car without asking. He got into a confrontation with a neighbor, squealed away from that location and drove recklessly through the neighborhood, clipping another man's car and leg, then fleeing the scene.

Shortly after that, he hit the Smith family, who was walking to a Magna McDonald's that night.

Six-year-old Darius was killed instantly. He had just finished his first week of kindergarten at Lincoln Elementary School.

The impact of the crash knocked out then-11-year-old Desmond's teeth, broke his leg, damaged a knee and gave him a concussion. His mother arrived at the hospital to find doctors stitching the boy's ear back to his head.

Buddha's dad, Earl Smith, was knocked unconscious.

Then-9-year-old Autumn was thrown 20 feet and wedged between the car's front tire and a chain-link fence. She had a broken right femur and double compound fracture of the left femur. Her spine was injured and she had swelling and fluid on the brain.

In a letter to the board, Autumn Smith said doctors need to remove a steel rod from her leg and she will be back in a wheelchair. "I've always wanted to be a cheerleader," she wrote. But deep scars on her legs prevent her from trying out. "I'm afraid everyone will laugh at me and make fun of me and my scars."

Most of the audience cried as the children's mother, Liza Smith, spoke at Tuesday's hearing. "I do believe people change, but three to four years is not enough time," she said, calling Jacques a "monster who has taken everything from me and my children."