Kaileigh’s Fryer’s mother has maintained enormous dignity throughout the ordeal that has followed her lovely daughter’s death in a car accident in April, 2014.
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Michelle Fryer held onto that dignity on the steps of Sydney’s Downing Centre yesterday, after Michael John Severino was sentenced to serve a minimum of four years in jail.
Severino, 25, was found guilty of aggravated dangerous driving occasioning death after Kaileigh was killed on April 9.
Whatever turmoil and conflicting emotions she may have been trying to balance, Mrs Fryer chose not to walk the path of revenge yesterday.
While some in the community may believe the drink driver should have been given a harsher sentence, Mrs Fryer spoke from the heart when she publicly hoped some good would come from this tragedy.
She told Fairfax Media that the sentence might be enough ... but then added a significant rider.
It would be enough, she said, if Severino walked from jail in four years time and dedicated himself to drink driving education.
That way, another mother might be spared the pain she and her family have endured.
That way, another life may be saved.
No sentence will ever bring Kaileigh back.
Mrs Fryer hopes a lesson will be learned and Severino will become a teacher.
He is a young man with a powerful lesson to share.
His life will never be the same and he is someone that school-age P-platers may well listen to in four years’ time - if he speaks from the heart.
By setting him a task, Mrs Fryer has offered Severino a chance at redemption.
It shows a generosity of spirit Kaileigh would be proud of.
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