Mother of crash victim pleads for off-duty cop to be given community service

Nov. 02--Kathy Kean has spent more than two grueling years assisting her daughter's slow recovery from a near-fatal car crash, helping her relearn how to walk and speak.

Kean's daughter suffered a severe brain injury when Erin Mowry, an off-duty Chicago cop who was allegedly driving drunk, plowed his car into her moments after she stepped into a street on Chicago's Northwest Side.

While Kean remains frustrated over the favoritism she believes police showed one of their own -- a Breathalyzer test wasn't administered for hours -- she sees no value in jailing Mowry if he ends up pleading guilty to an aggravated DUI charge.

Instead, she is proposing something unique -- that Mowry be given a community-service sentence requiring he work with brain-injury patients so he learns firsthand the damage his alleged actions caused.

This way, she said, he can realize the struggle that Kean's daughter, Courtney Cusentino, endured to learn again to sit up, swallow or stand.

"Sending this guy to jail for this particular crime is not going to get anybody help," Kean told the Chicago Tribune this week. "It's not going to help him at all."

"I want him to witness the day-to-day living activity of when your life goes upside down," said Kean, a 911 dispatcher for the city's Office of Emergency Management and Communication. "For him to see true struggles."

On Thursday, Cook County Judge Timothy Joyce is expected to announce the sentence he would impose if Mowry, who has pleaded not guilty, chooses to change his plea to guilty. If Mowry is dissatisfied with the judge's recommendation, he could instead go to trial.

If convicted, Mowry could be sentenced to anywhere from probation to 12 years in prison.

Mowry's attorney could not be reached for comment.

Andrew Holmes, a community activist who has spent years working closely with the families of crime victims, said Kean's stance is highly unusual. Many families seek a harsh punishment -- understandably, he said.

"They'd totally be upset because (the defendant) just destroyed a future," Holmes said. "They're looking at them to face some jail time."

Kean, 48, said her faith in God has helped her through the ordeal, but her views on Mowry's punishment are more about common sense than religious belief.

"The punishment needs to fit the crime," Kean said. "He didn't purposely go out of his way to find Courtney and run her down on purpose. It wasn't that kind of crime."

She views prison as counterproductive.

"Doing jail time, sitting in a cell ... is only going to make him more hateful," she said. "I feel sorry for the guy, in a way. ... We all make mistakes. His mistake that night was being selfish and getting behind the wheel."

Prosecutors allege Mowry was driving drunk the night in July 2015 when his Mercedes slammed into Cusentino as she crossed the street at Belmont and Olcott avenues at about 1:20 a.m.

Cusentino was thrown into the air and landed on her head, Kean said, causing brain injuries so traumatic that doctors could not assess the extent of the damage for weeks.

If Mowry works with brain-injury patients, Kean said, he will get a glimpse at the ordeal she and her daughter lived for months: watching her relearn basic skills like swallowing and sitting, massaging her body to try to fend off muscle atrophy, celebrating every tiny milestone.

They also regularly witnessed heartbreaking scenes of patients who must leave full-time care because of little or no progress in their recoveries, Kean said.

"Their room is cleaned out the next day," she said.

Witnessing that kind of pain up close would be a far more appropriate consequence for Mowry than sitting in a prison cell, she said.

Kean stressed that her daughter's ordeal was different from that of many victims of violent crime -- some of whom, understandably, want the stiffest punishment for their offenders.

If Mowry had deliberately sought to hurt Cusentino or posed further risk to the family, Kean said, she might feel differently.

"This wasn't some heinous, vindictive, mean man going out of his way to hurt us," Kean said. "This is a guy who's ... making a really poor decision."

And her daughter, now 23, agrees with her philosophy, Kean said.

"You can't take back what happened," she said. "We just have to move forward now, and she understands that. ... She always says she just wants to get better."

Kean, though, remains frustrated and angry that Mowry was not given a Breathalyzer test until more than four hours after the crash. Even then, his blood alcohol content still measured 0.092 percent, above the legal limit of 0.08, according to prosecutors.

Kean suspects that Mowry would have been treated differently if he wasn't a police officer.

"From the things I've seen, there was favoritism from the beginning," she said.

That angers Kean, especially given the fraught relationship between the community and law enforcement.

"The police right now have so many things against them," she said. "But I know a lot of good cops too."

Kean blames "arrogance" for Mowry's alleged actions.

"To think 'I'm a cop, and I'm going to get away with this. I'm going to get special treatment'?" she said. "But ... you're held to a higher standard in the public (view)."

Mowry, now 42, was stripped of his police powers and has been on paid desk duty since the crash.

"It sucks for him right now," Kean said. "You're going to lose your job ... but guess what, you got a second chance at life ... with an able body."

Luckily, her daughter, whom doctors didn't initially expect to survive, has earned a second chance at life too.

She no longer needs speech therapy, her mother said. She recently got a job taking tickets at a movie theater. She can dress herself, bathe herself and clean her room. She retains knowledge and has a sense of humor.

She walked into the Leighton Criminal Court Building for a hearing last week using a walker -- and just one leg brace, a new development, Kean noted with a smile.

And she can do her own makeup -- a big step for the aspiring cosmetologist. She appeared in court last week with flawless winged eyeliner.

mcrepeau@chicagotribune.com

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