DWI tragedy destroyed more than two victims

Janelle Allen was going to celebrate New Year's Day 2004 with her family by cooking breakfast at their home in Des Moines, Iowa.

Her husband Greg was making a pot of coffee while she prepared to cook a meal for her two daughters. That was until Janelle got a telephone call from her sister-in-law saying that a drunk driver had killed her mother, Amelia Haven, and her elder sister, Denise Kaye Haven.

"I remember throwing the phone across the room and falling to my knees," Allen told a roomful of students at Scouts Academy on Monday morning.

She recalled her husband holding her as she cried.

"I remember my husband putting his face next to mine and asking me, 'How should I pray for you? What should I pray for?'" Allen said. "All I could muster was seven words. 'Let goodness come out of this tragedy.'"

Amelia and Denise Haven, who occupied the family home in St. Michaels Housing in Window Rock, with one of Denise's two children, were particularly close. In the early hours of the morning, they'd been returning home after celebrating New Year's Eve at Sky City Casino with two friends.

Just west of the Continental Divide on Interstate 40, bad weather began to close in and Grace Keedo, the driver, slowed her SUV down to compensate for the reduced visibility while Amelia and Denise snoozed in the back seat.

At mile marker 45, near the Coolidge exit, a vehicle traveling at speeds up to 90 mph slammed into Keedo's SUV from behind, forcing it sideways and into a roll.

Allen's mother and sister were ejected, dying instantly. Keedo was alive but severely injured. The fourth passenger was also injured.

The driver of the other vehicle was Philbert Nez of Chinle, who had been drinking since about 11 a.m., the evidence would later show. He had driven a female companion to her home in Thoreau, N.M., and was on his way back to Gallup when the Keedo vehicle suddenly appeared in his headlights.

It was not his first DWI, but he had previously managed to get by without much in the way of punishment. For this one, however, Nez, a 29-year-old Army National Guardsman on his way to Iraq, was convicted on two counts of vehicular homicide and sentenced to 13 years in federal prison.

Allen's message for the kids she addressed Monday, students at an alternative high school for at-risk youth in the Fort Defiance area, was this: You have a choice, she told them, and you are responsible for the choices you make in life.

Restoring lives

Allen, whose late father Leo Haven is revered for his leadership in education and justice for low-income Navajos (he helped found DNA-People's Legal Services), is Cherokee born for Tódích'íi'nii (Bitter Water Clan).

In Des Moines, where she resides with her husband and daughters Hannah, 20, and Sydney, 14, Allen is a graphic designer and active participant in Christian ministry.

Working with the B.K. Glass Ministries and the Iowa Department of Corrections, she has given talks to prison inmates in Iowa and several other states.

"It was through them that I learned that a story, a tragedy, hits home when someone real tells the story," she said. "They felt that anyone can read the newspaper and watch it on the news but it made more sense to have someone tell the story."

The state of Iowa has a restorative justice program where crime victims, offenders and the community come together and heal. There's nothing like that here, she said.

"It's not like that in New Mexico," she said. "That's not the case on the Navajo Nation, either. In Iowa, no healing begins until someone comes from a restorative perspective.

"I would love to be in front of Philbert," she said. "That hasn't happened yet. The only thing we get is feedback and updates on court proceedings and other legalities.

"I did get a call from M.A.D.D. once and was told that Philbert wanted to do something with a healing circle," she said. "Nothing came of that and the only thing we were told was that we would be contacted once he goes up for parole, which is this year."

"It was way harder to deal with the legal system that it was to deal with losing my mother and sister," she said. "There are so many facets and it's like peeling all these layers of stuff. When you're grief-stricken, they expect to come to the court proceedings with a clear head.

"In New Mexico you feel like you're corrected and it just felt like there was no compassion at all."

Allen says she approached the tragedy and court proceedings like an investigator because, "I had to know everything for myself. I had to know."

The force of impact on Amelia and Denise was so great that, judging from the severity of Keedo's injuries, even if they had lived they would not have recovered, she said.

"I'm thankful that they didn't survive," she said.

"They loved children," Allen recalled. "They were always engaged with children and the community. They were both pretty funny and they had a lot of friends. They loved playing bingo."

Before the tragedy, she used to love coming home to the Navajo Nation when she could cut loose from her busy life in Iowa. But now, she said, "When I come home, it's not home.

"That's the thing, something like this disrupts people's lives. We're family oriented. The family was really engaged and now it's like we don't know how to function. Those two women were a very important part our lives."

Asked if there was anything she could say to Nez's family, Allen choked up with emotion and offered this, "There are no winners in this journey."

"They have so much to deal with and I know my mom and my sister would want us to love them," she said, a tear streaming down her cheek. "I have come to a place in my life where I see him as my brother. I know exactly what he is going through in prison."

Today, the spot where his life changed forever, and Amelia and Denise lost theirs, is marked by two flower-bedecked white crosses that face the rising sun. Somehow, despite time and the elements, they always look fresh.

"I want goodness to come out of this tragedy," Allen said. "It was so hard in the court sessions, seeing his father carry the burden of all the emotions that we all carried at some point. He was so broken and destroyed."

Allen will be on the reservation until March 19 as leader of a mission team from Des Moines. She is available for speaking engagements, time permitting. To reach her call 515-971-0237 or e-mail allen.janelle@mchsi.com.

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