Crime & Safety

Dead Man's Brother Wants Drunk Driver to 'Rot in Hell'

The family of a man killed by a drunken driver thought her eight-year sentence was too light.

By Joseph Hosey

Ken Farmer told how his 6-year-old niece and nephew kiss the urn holding their father's ashes every morning.

"They say, 'Good morning, daddy,'" Farmer said moments after the woman who killed their father was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Cara Quiett's sentence wasn't enough for Farmer or the other relatives of his slain brother, James Farmer.

"In that short amount of time she'll be out to do it again," James Farmer's daughter, Rebecca Thorn, said.

"I think she should have gotten the maximum and she should rot in hell," Ken Farmer said.

Will County Judge Daniel Rozak handed down Quiett's sentence Friday.

Quiett, 32, was convicted of driving under the influence six years before the drunken crash that killed James Farmer.

Quiett ran over James Farmer while the 49-year-old man was riding his bicycle home from work in June 2012. James Farmer had left his car at home so his wife could take their young twins to a doctor's appointment.

James Farmer was bicycling on Midland Avenue in Rockdale when Quiett hit him. Joliet police Sgt. Phillip Stice testified earlier that Quiett refused to submit to a blood draw to test her level of intoxication and told officers she would fight them if they tried to take her blood.

Stice said he secured a search warrant and he and three other officers held her down while a phlebotomist at Presence St. Joseph Medical Center took a blood sample. The draw was not done until nearly five hours after the collision but still showed Quiett's blood alcohol content was above the 0.08 percent legal limit at 0.148.

James Farmer remained in a coma at St. Joseph's for 12 days before his wife, Amanda Farmer, decided to take him off life support. Amanda Farmer said her husband immediately stopped breathing and died.

While James Farmer was in the hospital, Quiett, who was free on bond, went on a vacation to Florda with her boyfriend.

"She chose to go to Florida," said Ken Farmer. "(She was) forgetting about my brother on his deathbed fighting for his life."

Quiett has already served more than a year of her sentence in the Will County jail. She has to do 85 percent of the approximately seven years she has left. Ken Farmer pointed out that Quiett's family can go see her in prison, and his sister, Ardis Farmer, added, "We have to visit our brother in a box."

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