MADISON, Ala (WHNT) — Nine years ago today, a North Alabama mother’s life changed forever. A drunk driver killed her two daughters in a car crash.
That driver is a former NASA astronaut who was just released from prison on Memorial Day. The girls, mother, Latrice Parler is speaking for the first time since his release.
“My kids could have been anything,” Parler said. “They could have been judges, lawyers, doctors, anything. But that was stolen from me and everybody else.”
On June 6, 2016, the lives of 13-year-old Jayla and her 11-year-old sister Niomi were cut short when former NASA Astronaut James Halsell Jr. slammed into the back of their dad’s car in Tuscaloosa County.
Latrice Parler still remembers that night when she last checked in on her girls and their dad said that they were almost at home.
“They were listening to Taylor Swift on the road and singing,” Parler said. ‘So, they were in good spirits about going to see their grandma and spending the summer with their dad.”
The next morning, Parler woke up to a flood of missed calls.
She called one of the numbers back, and that’s when her life changed forever.
“Where are my girls? And she said they didn’t make it. And at first, I said to myself, this has got to be a dream,“ Parler said. “I said, ‘What did you say?’ She said, ‘Latrice, they didn’t make it.’ I said, ‘They didn’t make it.’ The cry, the howl, that came out of me. I never knew my voice could be that loud.”
The mom describes how she felt when she came face to face with the man responsible for her girls’ deaths.
“I was overwhelmed, I didn’t know if I was going to be angry or sad for him or what,” Parler said. “But I had mixed emotions.”
A grand jury indicted James Halsell Jr. on reckless murder charges. The case took five years to work its way through the court system. Halsell pleaded guilty to two manslaughter and two assault charges.
A judge agreed to sentence him to four years in prison followed by 10 years on supervised release.
A sentence that was a hard pill to swallow for the girl’s family.
“Justice would have looked like what the law stated,” Parler said. “It could have been the maximum amount of time for manslaughter. He should have served his 20 years. And as a mother, if it was up to me, he would have been there for the rest of his life.”
Fast forward to today, and the girls would be in college. Jayla donning her favorite color, pink. While her little sister Niomi loved the color purple.
Their mother shares that the sisters were honor roll students who shared a special bond.
“They just loved each other so much that I don’t think that even at the end, they would have been okay with neither one of them not being here,” Parler said.
Parler tells me her faith, family, and counseling have helped her deal with the hurt and heartbreak.
“Every day is a challenge for me,” Parler said. “I have my girls all around this house. Look at my family. All I see is my girls. I look at me and I see my girls. So just to channel it, I try to keep busy and be positive and be an ear for anybody else who’s going through anything.”
At the time of the crash, James Halsell Jr. was on probation for a DUI conviction in California. News 19 did reach out to his attorney for comment, and we have not heard back from him.
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