Saturday Read: Life After The Crash -- A New Normal For Couple Hit By Drunk Driver

by Patricia A. Miller

Josie Morey makes lists. Lots of lists. Not just your ordinary shopping or things-to-do lists.

She makes lists to make it through life. To remember who she spoke to, what they said, who visited. What she needs to do next.

”My days are spent writing down explicit details of what I did, who I spoke to, what I said,” she said in a victim statement to Ocean County Superior Court Judge Patricia B. Roe. “Sticky notes to remind me of everything are everywhere. I continually ask the same questions to my husband, because I forgot that I asked. I cannot remember events that happen.”

Josie Morey has been doing this ever since she and her husband Gerry were struck by a drunk driver with a blood alcohol limit five times over the legal limit.

She has to make the lists. The accident left her with traumatic brain injury and almost obliterated her short-term memory.

“My whole life is lists,” she said. “My short-term memory is pretty much gone”.

Josie Morey’s wit and intelligence are still with her. But the accident has changed life as they knew it forever.

“She’s gotten a lot better,” Gerry Morey says. “But she’s not the person I met five years ago and she never will be.”

She sat with her eyes closed much of the time during a recent interview with Patch. She wasn’t falling asleep. She keeps them closed to concentrate on what people are saying to her.

A life-altering day

Jan. 31, 2014 was the day life changed forever for the Moreys. It was the day a drunken Christina M. Guarnieri left her nursing job at Community Medical Center and got into her car with a blood alcohol level of .40, five times over the legal limit.
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The Moreys were heading north on Route 9 in Bayvillle, to a favorite pizza place. They had just passed the intersection of Sylvan Lakes Boulevard and Route 9 when Gerry noticed that traffic was backed up on the southbound side.

Then he saw one of the drivers on the southbound side cut sharply to the right, headed directly towards their car. It was Guarnieri.

Gerry quickly cut to the left. But it was too late.

“I shouted to Josie ‘we’re about to get hit,” Gerry recalled.

Guarnieri’s car plowed into theirs. The impact tore the Morey’s rear axle out. The car spun 150 feet, then slammed into the curb.

“He yelled at me ‘we’re getting hit,’ Josie recalled. “The car started spinning. It as very surreal. I saw the world go by. I know I was hurt.”

Gerry’s policeman’s instincts kicked in. He fumbled for his cell phone and called to report a “15A”- accident with injuries.

Gerry, 58, remembers watching a police officer give Guarnieri a series of sobriety tests on the roadway before they were both taken to Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune. He later learned beer bottles were found in Guarnieri’s car and that she had been drinking and driving.

Josie, 52, was told she had a sprained thumb and a concussion. She was in the hospital for three days.

“I had the most horrific headache,” she said. “It felt like someone hit me in the head with a baseball bat.”

Gerry was diagnosed with ankle, lower back and should injuries and a broken tooth.

When they were discharged and went to their private physician, they learned their injuries were far worse than originally diagnosed.

Permanent injuries

Josie had a fractured skull, traumatic brain injury, a concussion, a broken thumb, herniated disks and crushed nerves in her hip. Gerry had broken ribs and a torn rotator cuff.

For the first four months after the crash, Josie was a ”prisoner in her own home.”

Gerry kept the lights in the house to a minimum, since she was so sensitive to light and sound. She wore sunglasses even in the house. She had double vision and could not read or watch television.

Josie, a special needs teacher in the Neptune school district, was out of work for nine months. She missed another month in January 2015 to have surgery on her neck. Gerry or her son Rocco had to drive her to school and back to Bayville after that.

Her injuries have jeopardized her career. She got through the rest of the year with another teacher in the room with her. But the accident has taken a financial toll as well.

“As my sole caretaker, my husband could not supplement the loss of my paycheck, so he spent every day worrying about me and worrying about keeping a roof over our heads,“ she told the judge. “The toll this accident has had on us financially and will continue to have on us is just overwhelming to me.“

Gerry, - a 25-year retired Berkeley Township police officer - now does counter-terrorism consulting work. But he is afraid to leave his wife for long periods of time.

Josie goes to ”brain training” sessions each week to help her with her short-term memory problems.

The sentencing

Roe sentenced Guarnieri, 40, to 90 days in the Ocean County Jail and five years probation for assault by auto and driving under the influence. The jail term is the maximum penalty for a second DWI offender, said Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office spokesperson Al Della Fave has said.

The drunk driving conviction was Guarnieri’s third DWI, but because the last DWI was more than 10 years ago, she was entitled to be sentenced as a second-time offender, he said.

Guarnieri will also lose her license for two years. An interlock device must be on her primary vehicle for five years. must also have a mental health evaluation, comply with all recommended treatment and maintain employment.

Steven Hernandez, Guarnieri’s attorney and Guarnieri asked Roe not to impose jail time because she had no prior criminal record, Della Fave said.

Guarnieri told Roe that jail time would impose an ”excessive hardship” on her family. Hernandez said that she did not “contemplate the harm her conduct caused,” Della Fave said.

But Roe cited Guarnieri’s excessive blood alcohol content and the need to deter drunk driving as reasons for the jail time, he said.

The Moreys were in the courtroom for the sentencing. Josie read a three-page victim statement and pleaded for Roe to give Guarnieri the maximum allowed by law.

“I hate the financial extremes she has put us in, I hate the long dark pain-filled days I had to go through because of her,” Josie said. ”I hate the long-term damage that I will always have to deal with. I hate that she hurt my husband too and the huge toll this has taken on him. But most of all I hate that I know what it feels like to hate someone.”

Photos: Gerry Morey describes the accident, the couple relaxes on the porch of their Bayville home, photos by Patricia A. Miller. Josie Morey in the hospital before her January 2015 surgery, the couple on their wedding day in August 2012, photos courtesy of Gerry Morey. Christina M. Guarnieri, courtesy of Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office.