We can’t be the only ones unhappy with the sentence Roxann Berry received in Lincoln County Superior Court last week for her role in the death of Loren St. Cyr.
As the court decreed, Berry, 23, reported this week to begin serving her four months as a guest of the state. Four months confinement for a direct role in a man’s death seems a little light, although the long-term consequences of her sentence are serious.
She is now a convicted felon, with all the baggage that entails.
For the rest of her life, every job interview Berry ever does, every significant application she fills out, every background check she undergoes will be a challenge. After her first four months, she will be on probation for a year and any serious violation of that will likely land her in the big house for the remaining 14 months of her sentence. Then too, her education is interrupted and she loses four months of her child’s life.
If St. Cyr died in a straight up accident that would be one thing but it isn’t because Berry left the scene. If she was driving while impaired at the time of the accident, in the end, she benefited legally by leaving, but we don’t know. She claims she was just sober and scared, but we don’t know that either. All we have is her word to go on.
We do know that it is unconscionable to effectively leave someone to die and stay quiet about it for more than a year.
It’s not that the accident happened in the first place. Accidents, tragic accidents, happen all the time. We understand that. We understand how it’s possible to ascribe some fault to Loren for his role in the accident. He was after all, wearing non-reflective clothing, walking alongside a rural road on a dark foggy night.
There remains confusion about exactly where he was when Berry’s car came over the hill, but saying he bears some responsibility for his own death is like blaming the driver of the second car to hit him.
Both may have contributed to the end result in some fashion, but St. Cyr is dead today because Berry hit him in the first place.
At her sentencing this week, her supporters spoke highly of Berry’s character and that is commendable, but Loren St. Cyr was good man, too. He was a beloved son, brother, uncle and friend. He was a popular kid at Lincoln Academy and a very good athlete.
Despite Berry’s good points and there may be many, the fact is, when she needed to stand tall, she didn’t. She ran away, leaving the St. Cyr family to twist in the wind for 18 months.
She stayed silent while the finger of suspicion pointed in every other direction but hers and she didn’t stay down for an hour, a day, or a week. She stayed quiet for more than a year and a half and she didn’t come forward because her conscience finally got the better of her. She didn’t come forward at all.
Sportscaster Bob Ley once famously noted a reputation is what you do when other people are watching; character is what you do when no one is watching. Now we know, and for the record, when no one was watching, Berry was wanting.
