LONDON, ONT. -- “Cody was a great kid; he had a funny laugh. He would come through our front door and announce that he was home. Nothing mattered more to him than family and friends,” says Shauna Andrews, as she holds back tears while describing her 23-year-old son Cody.
Cody was killed in a horrific car crash on Sept. 8, 2016.
“It’s unfortunate we didn’t get to see the rest of Cody’s life, and we miss him, and we miss that relationship,” says Cody’s father Dave Andrews.
Cody was the passenger in a car that was struck by a drunk driver at the intersection of Dundas Street and Highbury Avenue. The impaired driver was two times over the legal alcohol limit when he ran a red light, speeding through the intersection, killing Cody Andrews and Jerry Petrie, and injuring two others.
“The whole situation is just awful and there are no words,” Shauna Andrews writes in a letter to the Civic Works Committee.
The letter is requesting a MADD Canada Memorial Road Sign to be installed at the site of the crash in the City of London.
“Cody’s life mattered; he should be here. His death was 100 per cent preventable. The sign is powerful because it’s a stark reminder that two people died at that intersection,” says Shauna Andrews.
As it stands, MADD Canada installs Memorial Road Signs only on provincial highways.
“Our agreement with the province is limited to provincial highways but we have installed MADD Canada Road Signs in some municipalities. The two most recent examples are Niagara Falls and Hamilton,” says MADD Canada’s Director of Victim Services, Steve Sullivan.
This request, would see the first MADD Memorial Sign in London.
“We have been working on the Andrews family for several years, and it’s really important to them to find different ways to both honour their son, and also to raise awareness about impaired driving and the risk that it carries,”, says Sullivan.
MADD Canada covers the cost of having the city make and install the signs.
Ward 2 Coun. Shawn Lewis says, “If council decided to move ahead with this it would require some detailed work on staff’s part, to bring forward some draft recommendations on how to regulate memorial signage.”
The director of roads and transportation with the City of London, Doug MacRae, says the request for approval of signs such as this require the authorization from council, and that this particular request is headed to the Civic Works Committee next week.
In the meantime, Shauna says, they will continue to honour and remember their son Cody’s life.
“Drunk and impaired drivers, don’t pick and choose their victims. I want to prevent this, I don’t want to see another family going through what we are going through. I do not want them to miss their family member for the rest of their lives”.
