photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Impaired driver crash survivor Amy Ebers-Jumet shares her story on Aug. 14, 2024, at the Dole Institute of Politics, 2350 Petefish Drive.

An Olathe mother who was violently struck by an impaired driver as her family looked on in horror is sharing her story of survival in hopes of sparing others similar devastation.

Amy Ebers-Jumet’s heart actually stopped beating that day four years ago. It was only because paramedics were somehow able to revive her that she lived to see her family again — and to become a fierce advocate for sober driving.

Ebers-Jumet shared her experience Wednesday at a Lawrence event hosted by the Kansas Department of Transportation ahead of its Labor Day safe-driving campaign.

The KDOT campaign — “If You Feel Different, You Drive Different. Drive High, Get a DUI” — runs through Sept. 2. The campaign’s goal is to end impaired driving. In addition to Ebers-Jumet, speakers at the Dole Institute included Rich Lockhart, Lawrence police chief; Heidi Garcia, the director of the University of Kansas’ Health Education Office; and Gary Herman, KDOT’s behavioral safety manager.

Ebers-Jumet, a mother of seven, said that she was struck by an impaired driver on May 9, 2020, just after celebrating Mother’s Day with her family. She and her children were getting ready to leave her mother’s house and she was standing next to her vehicle when — “bam!” — she was hit.

“The impact was sudden, it was severe, and completely unexpected. I didn’t even know what hit me. All I knew was that something hit my head very hard. I was thrown to the ground and tumbled about and then all of the air was squeezed out of my chest,” Ebers-Jumet said.

Adding to the horror, her youngest child and her mother watched from about 20 feet away as she was hit and run over.

Ebers-Jumet attributes her survival to the quick actions of emergency responders. She said that the ambulance arrived within six minutes of the crash and that she was loaded inside within another four minutes.

She remembers that she pleaded with one paramedic in the ambulance to help her. She asked if she was going to die, then she blacked out.

“Everything went black. I coded. Cardiac arrest, my heart stopped. I died. The impaired driver killed me, but my paramedics, Ben and Ro, they got busy saving my life,” Ebers-Jumet said.

Paramedics Ben Gleeson and Rochelle Hobart needle-decompressed her lung, performed CPR for 11 minutes, and shocked her five times with a defibrillator before her heart started beating again — just as the ambulance pulled into the Overland Park Regional Medical Center.

Then came the long recovery from the numerous injuries, including a broken hand and foot, lacerations all over her body, a nearly detached right ear, an abdominal hernia, a lacerated liver, a collapsed left lung, 11 broken ribs, a separated shoulder, a broken scapula and a partially crushed heart.

She spent the next 14 days in the ICU, her family by her side not knowing if she would survive. In the hospital her heart was pumping only about 20% of the blood it normally would, and now, four years later, her heart still pumps only about 40% of what it should. She spent the next several months in rehab and still needs additional surgery to repair a shattered ankle.

Ebers-Jumet shares her story regularly during Mothers Against Drunk Driving victim impact panels, at which people convicted of impaired driving hear how the crime affects victims and families.

Ebers-Jumet did not share what ultimately happened to the driver who hit her, but she expressed hope that her story could reach people like that driver and influence them to make better choices.

Chief Lockhart also shared a close call with an impaired driver. When he was a young officer in 1992 driving home after a shift, a car darted in front of him around 3 a.m. at an intersection in Kansas City, Missouri.

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Lawrence Police Chief Rich Lockhart talks about his experiences with drunk drivers on Aug. 14, 2024, at the Dole Institute of Politics.

“I hit that car going 35 miles per hour, which doesn’t sound like a lot but the impact of that collision pushed the motor of that car back into my passenger compartment four inches, spun my car around … I was facing the wrong way,” Lockhart said.

He said the Cadillac El Dorado had run a red light and was bent in half; it had stopped 50 to 75 feet away from the intersection. He said his first thought was “why didn’t the airbag go off?” Then he realized that the airbag was sitting in his lap and that it had given his arm a friction burn.

He looked toward the Cadillac and saw the driver trying to get out of the car and flee, first trying the driver side door, then climbing over his unconscious passenger and out a broken window.

“Now, I have to get my wits about me. So, I get out of the car, and I have to switch from traffic-crash victim to police officer to make an arrest. As I get over to the car, I can see inside, and his passenger is just lying there with her head on the armrest. I thought for sure I had killed her,” Lockhart said.

Lockhart said he was able to stop the driver and arrest him. He later discovered that the driver’s blood alcohol level was about three times the current legal limit of .08.

“Fortunately, his passenger lived. I didn’t have to live through the trauma of killing someone, even though it wouldn’t have been my fault,” Lockhart said.

Lockhart has often wondered how the crash could have played out differently if he had arrived at the intersection just a few moments earlier and that Cadillac had hit him instead.

“I wouldn’t be here talking to you all today. That’s for sure,” Lockhart said.

That close call is just one thing that crosses Lockhart’s mind when he sees an impaired driver. He also remembers two of his friends and co-workers — Sgt. Jim Leach, who died in 1992, and Officer Tom Myers, who died in 1998 — who were killed by impaired drivers.

“I’ll never get to talk to either one of those two again and I haven’t for years but I remember them always,” Lockhart said, noting that these crashes and the resulting deaths were preventable.

“The one thing you as a driver have 100% control over is when you get behind the wheel of a car after you’ve been drinking. Don’t do it. Make a plan ahead of time. Don’t wait for your impaired mind to decide if you’re good enough or not,” Lockhart said.

The Lawrence Police Department conducted a DUI checkpoint on Aug. 2 which more than 400 cars passed through, Lockhart said. Officers investigated 19 of those cars at the checkpoint for impaired driving, and eight of those investigations resulted in an arrest, he said.

“Those were eight people that didn’t get the chance to run the red light at 39th and Paseo,” which is where his crash in 1992 had occurred. “Eight people who didn’t get the chance to kill somebody’s family member. Eight people who will hopefully learn a lesson not to drink and drive again,” Lockhart said.

The drive-sober campaign is a part of a larger effort by KDOT’s Drive to Zero strategy to end all Kansas traffic deaths, said Herman, who was the event host. He said that in 2023 Kansas saw 67 deaths involving an impaired driver.

He said recent studies showed that nationally 14 million people drove under the influence in 2023 while another 12 million drove while impaired by illegal drugs.

“That’s 26 million people whose behavior we are here to change one person at a time,” Herman said.

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Gary Herman, KDOT’s behavior safety manager, speaks at a news conference on Aug. 14, 2024, at the Dole Institute of Politics.