Maggie McDonnell

On July 2, 1997, 20-year old Maggie McDonnell was helping out a co-worker when she drove to work at 11:30 a.m. Sadly, she never made it there. She was killed by a man who fell asleep while driving and hit Maggie’s car head-on. He admitted that he had been awake for 30 hours after he smoked “crack” cocaine at a local drug house. He was not under the influence of drugs at the time of the crash. Yet, because there was no specific law addressing fatigue or drowsy driving in New Jersey at the time, the jury was not allowed to deliberate on the man’s sleep deprivation and his punishment for killing Maggie was a suspended jail sentence and a $200 fine. Yet, from tragedy came hope. Carole McDonnell, Maggie’s mother, successfully lobbied the State of New Jersey to enact the nation’s first drowsy driving law. Titled “Maggie’s Law,” it establishes fatigued driving as recklessness under the state’s vehicular homicide statute.

Maggie McDonnell was the youngest member of a very close family. She was an extraordinarily social girl, lighting up every room she entered and stealing the hearts of everyone she met. She was an accomplished ballerina – a pair of pink ballet slippers now graces her tombstone. After college, she hoped to become a social worker. Her death left her parents, siblings, and an entire community devastated by grief. “She was my ‘something special’ and now she is my angel that walks beside me,” says Maggie’s mother, Carole McDonnell.