MATTOON, Ill. (WCIA) — Nearly three years have passed since the tragic loss experienced by 19-year-old Aurora Gordon and her 27-year-old sister, Shelby Thomason, who lost their mother and stepfather.
James “Howard” Sutton, aged 55, and Rachel Sutton, aged 44, tragically lost their lives when they were struck by a drunk driver at the intersection of Coles County Roads 1200N and 500E in 2022.
It was a route they always took, although their reason for being on the road that day was out of the ordinary.
“My stepdad was not one to usually want to dine out, but he made an exception saying, ‘Let’s go have Mexican… It’s Memorial Day, we deserve a treat,’” Gordon recalled.
The couple was in one car, while then-16-year-old Gordon decided to take her own. Gordon was driving behind her parents when she saw it — a car headed for the intersection that didn’t look to be stopping.
“I start to slow down and that’s when it had struck my mom’s car and flipped it,” Gordon said. “At this point I’m probably 500 feet behind them, and I pulled over to the side of the road.”
She said it was like something out of a movie.
“I saw every single flip of this car in slow motion [but] I heard nothing [like] my ears didn’t work,” she said.
After calling 911, Gordon called her older sister, who rushed over from a Memorial Day cookout.
“I’m [answered] like, ‘Hello,’” Thomason said. “It’s so traumatizing, it’s so embedded in my brain. That call is something I will never forget. The way she was screaming like, ‘Shelby, mom and Howard were hit.”
Thomason met Gordon at the crash site not knowing much, but hoping for the best. She saw helicopters which made her believe her parents may still be alive.
“We’re sitting there [and] there’s tons of people around us just trying to calm us down,” Thomason said. “The cop ends up coming back to us and he goes, ‘I’m going to need you to sit down for this information,’ and we obviously we knew what that meant.”
The sisters said it was surreal driving away from the crash knowing their parents laid there dead. Thomason didn’t hesitate to take Gordon under her wing, and moved her into her home that same day.
The memory of it all continues to haunt them both. Gordon has since been diagnosed with PTSD. Thomason lives with the constant anxiety and fear of something similar happening again.
“[Gordon] was having very, very, very bad panic attacks there for a while almost every other day, and we even had to call the suicude hotline a few times,” Thomason said. “She was in the hospital a few times because that trauma is real.”
The two said while everyone makes mistakes, there’s no excuse for getting behind the wheel drunk.
“I see it all over social media, people making jokes about it,” Gordon said. “It’s not a game, this is not a joke, like people actually die because of drunk driving.”
They know first-hand how devastating it can be when reckless drivers enter the roadway.
“Just be aware, be cognitive of what can happen, whose lives you can affect, whose lives you can take, and the trauma that comes along with that for other families but also yourself,” Thomason said.
Coles County deputies said there were two people in the car that hit the Suttons. The then-19-year-old driver, Douglas Wilson, was sentenced to 14 years in prison last year.
