Daughter Killed by DUI Driver, Kin Deliver Message Via Lawsuit

The last thing the Bammers wanted was litigation.

They believed in forgiveness, they said, and had faith that it was God’s job, not the courts’, to balance the scales. But when the parents of the drunk driver who killed their daughter failed to express remorse, they got an attorney and sued.

“We prayed a lot about it,” Nancy Bammer said of the family’s decision to sue the parents of one of their daughter’s friends. “It really wasn’t for economics; there was a need to get the word out.”

And in the end, that’s what the Laguna Beach family settled for: enough money to start a scholarship in their daughter’s name and the opportunity to deliver a straight-from-the-heart message to the jury on the nearly unthinkable consequences of drunk driving.

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Jennifer Bammer’s life ended the night of Feb. 12, 2003, on a mountainous stretch of U.S. 395, just north of Bishop. She and two friends were headed to Mammoth for a weekend ski trip. Outside, it was pitch dark and 20 degrees, with a gentle flurry of snow.

Bammer, 22, was curled up in the back of the Ford Explorer after drinking wine from a bottle with her friend Audrey Rose Brecht, 19, for three hours.

Brecht, who been ordered by her parents not to drive because of two prior DUI convictions, was at the wheel. Heather Vinckier, 19, had done most of the driving that night, but after seven hours on the highway, she was tired and asked Brecht to take over.

Police said Brecht had a 0.23% blood alcohol content -- nearly three times the legal threshold of 0.08% -- and was traveling at 78 mph when she tried to pass a car. The Explorer skidded and slid across the road, striking the center divider and rolling three times.

Brecht and Vinckier, both wearing seat belts, crawled out of the wreckage relatively unscathed.

Bammer was thrown through a window and died of massive skull fractures, according to the Mono County coroner’s office.

Back in Laguna Beach, Larry Bammer, Jennifer’s 26-year-old brother and an officer with five years on the city police force, was at the family home recuperating. A man had fired a .357-caliber handgun at him during an October 2002 robbery attempt, striking him in the abdomen. He spent several days in intensive care.

He credits his family’s faith -- they had all become born-again Christians in 2000 -- for helping them all cope in the aftermath.

“I had a peace beyond me,” said Nancy Bammer when she found out about her son’s shooting. “I knew he was going to be OK, and that our faith [in] God would get us through.”

In the early morning of Feb. 13, 2003, Larry Bammer’s superior from the Police Department knocked on the family’s door.

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Friends for Five Weeks

How can a parent make sense of the death of a child?

Nancy Bammer was a kindergarten teacher in Costa Mesa, working with children whose families weren’t as well off as her own. She and her husband, Jim, who works for a mineral company, would invite friends to their home every Fourth of July to watch the fireworks, sharing the seemingly endless ocean view from their living room.

Jennifer Bammer was tall and athletic, with flowing brown hair. As a youngster, she hated vegetables, but in her teenage years she renounced meat. After high school, she traveled to Hawaii on vacation and decided to stay -- for 10 months. She didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life, but taking classes at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo was helping her find out. She was a Saddleback student at the time of her death.

She had known Brecht for about five weeks. In pictures taken together, the two posed and smiled like lifelong friends.

Brecht had grown up 30 miles away, in a family of four in Seal Beach. With hot pink hair and standing 5 foot 1, Brecht loved the water, at one point becoming a junior lifeguard.

When she was 16, Brecht got her first DUI. She had been drinking beer at a pool party and struck another vehicle while backing up. A passing motorcycle officer saw the accident.

Ten months later, with her license still suspended, Brecht attended another party with alcohol and drove off with a friend’s car.

Traveling about 30 mph, she struck a security gate and was convicted again of DUI.

Brecht, as well as her parents, William and Laura, and their lawyers all declined to be interviewed for this story.

Six days after the accident that killed Bammer, the Mono County district attorney charged Brecht with four felony counts, including murder and DUI.

The charges were later reduced to gross vehicular manslaughter. She pleaded no contest.

On Aug. 12, 2003, Brecht was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

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Fast Lessons in Court

While the Bammers waited for some show of remorse, they discovered, as part of the sentencing process, Brecht’s two DUIs. They said they would never have allowed their daughter on the trip had they known.

The Bammers say some fault could have been placed on their daughter: She should have spoken up when Brecht decided to take the wheel. But the family of five was now a family of four.

On Aug. 18 this year, 18 months after Jennifer Bammer’s death, the civil case of Bammer vs. Brecht began in Orange County Central Justice Center in Santa Ana.

In their lawsuit, the Bammers accused Laura and William Brecht of “entrusting a vehicle to a reckless and incompetent driver.” Even though Audrey Rose Brecht was an adult, she was still living with her parents and they were ultimately responsible for her actions, the Bammers said.

Laura Brecht, her attorney told the court, agreed to let the girls take her Ford Explorer, as long as Audrey Brecht was not allowed to drive. Further, the defense argued, Audrey Brecht had been dropped from her parents’ insurance policy, a clear indication that the parents did not want her to drive.

The court proceedings didn’t last long. By lunch recess of the first day, Nancy Bammer succumbed to the stress of reliving the tragedy and asked her lawyers to seek an end to the case.

“If we continued with this, everybody would have been bruised,” she said.

Right before the jury returned for the afternoon session, the Bammers and Brechts agreed on a settlement of $168,500.

Before the court was adjourned, Nancy Bammer asked the judge for one favor. She wanted to address the jury.

The night before, she had lain in bed, unable to sleep, trying to think of the message she wanted to deliver.

“In my prayer,” she said to all in court, “my answer was that God, for some reason -- I don’t know why -- he wanted us to go through this at this time. Down deep I’ve always felt part of it might be ... that one of you would run into a situation of someone that’s making poor choices.”

Nancy Bammer went on, the tears coming now.

“And your responsibilities as a parent, if they’re living at home, do not end at 18. And I feel that one of you or more of you in this courtroom are going to experience something and you’ll learn from this experience and give good advice to that person. It might be take the keys away, take the car away. But in my heart I have to believe someone is going to get saved from this. And that’s the reason why we put ourselves through this.”

As the courtroom emptied, eight jurors approached Nancy Bammer and hugged her.

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Converting the Loss

New beginnings come in drawings from kindergartners, in scholarships established in a daughter’s memory, in a police department feeling the loss of a little sister, in memories, family dinners and warm embraces.

After the accident, Larry Bammer was certified as a drug recognition expert, trained to detect which drugs suspects were high on. He is one of two with that training on Laguna Beach’s 50-member force.

“It was a reality check to a lot of the officers and that we can be victims and be affected,” he said. “We’re not immune to tragedy.”

Stefanie, the youngest of the Bammers at 16, recently earned her driving permit and speaks in driver education classes about the dangers of drinking and driving.

The support from Laguna Beach residents has been overwhelming, Nancy Bammer said. The family was showered with cards, donations to the Jennifer Bammer scholarship at her alma mater, Laguna Beach High, and the prayers and thoughts of many.

In return, Nancy, Jim, Larry and Stefanie Bammer have a new mission. No apologies, nor any amount of money, will bring Jennifer back, but if they can keep another family from suffering such an ordeal, all will be well.

This, they are certain, is the divine plan of a higher power.

Jim Bammer last spoke with Jennifer at 4:30 p.m. the day she died. But Jennifer didn’t say goodbye. It was her trademark to end their phone calls with “Love you more than anything.”

Today, the family has adopted her catchphrase. When they leave for work, head to school or end a phone call, they say, “Love you more than anything.”