Doug Schneider

USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

Victim Ashley Knetzger%2C honor student and tennis standout%2C planned to attend NWTC and become a nurse

%22I want Ashley%27s memory to carry on as long as people will listen%2C%22 Green Bay police officer says

Crash also killed Ashley Knetzger%27s friend%2C 18-year-old Talhia Heroux of Brussels

Killer Anrietta Geske%2C serving 80 years in prison%2C admitted to having had four drinks before crash

More than six years later, Mike Knetzger still remembers the screams.

A drunken driver, drag-racing through Ashwaubenon at more than 80 mph, had slammed into the Buick carrying his teenage stepdaughter and his daughter's friend. The impact blasted the Buick into pieces, instantly killing 18-year-olds Ashley Britsch-Knetzger and Talhia Heroux.

Inside his family's Green Bay home, Knetzger had just broken the news to his wife: her eldest child was not coming home.

"Imagine the loudest scream," Knetzger said. "She collapsed on the floor and wailed, 'No! No!'"

As Knetzger told the story inside a Green Bay classroom last week, some in the audience choked back tears. Many of the students at Rasmussen College are not much older than Ashley and Talhia had been when they were killed the night of June 3, 2008.

With the memory of that night etched in his brain, Knetzger, 42, said he almost quit his job as a Green Bay police officer in the weeks after the crash.

"I said 'Lisa, I don't know if I can go back to work,'" Knetzger recalled telling his wife. "I don't know how I would handle the next drunk driver." He considered taking a disability settlement and retiring.

Instead, he has dedicated his life to two things: raising Ashley's brother, Noah, and younger sister, Madeline, with Lisa, and working to eliminate drunken driving in Wisconsin.

On the job, Knetzger regularly works extra shifts to help find and arrest those who drink and drive. The night he returned to work after Ashley's death, he arrested a gang member who had been driving drunk, admonishing the man en route to the county jail to "think about your own daughter."

In his off hours, he often can be found at area schools, educating students about the dangers of getting behind the wheel after drinking.

'Ashley's Story'

Statistics show that efforts like Knetzger's are needed.

More than 3,400 Wisconsinites have at least six convictions for operating while intoxicated. At least 1,340 have seven OWIs and more than 500 have at least eight OWI convictions, according to state data compiled through 2012.

"Ashley's Story," a website her family dedicated to her memory, advocates for making a person's first OWI a criminal offense. Wisconsin is the only U.S. state where it is not.

"If a person stood on U.S. 41 and fired a gun but didn't hit anything," Knetzger told students, "he would be arrested for a felony. But if you take a 2,000-pound 'bullet' and drive it down the road and don't hit anything, you get a glorified speeding ticket."

He also advocates for:

• Assisting victims of drunken driving through advocacy and support.

• Explaining to young people the impact of drunken driving.

• Recognizing the efforts of agencies and officers who combat drunken driving.

• Supporting treatment programs aimed at combating drunken driving and underage drinking.

"We change behavior by impacting people emotionally, giving them something they can relate to," Knetzger said. "If you touch people in that fashion, you begin to make a difference."

80-year sentence

In the weeks before her death, Ashley Knetzger had graduated from Fox Valley Lutheran High School in Appleton. There, she had lettered in tennis and excelled in the classroom, achieving highest honors in her final semester.

Counting the days until she could enter the nursing program at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, Knetzger was juggling three part-time jobs and serving as a volunteer tennis coach. Her occasional free hours were often spent with Heroux, who lived in Brussels.

Their killer took a different path to the crash.

Anrietta Geske, then 46, had moved from Texas to Ledgeview after a divorce. She admitted at trial to having had four alcoholic drinks at a Green Bay bar before the crash, but insisted she wasn't drunk and said her Porsche Boxster convertible hadn't been speeding.

Instead, she claimed she had been distracted by her Chihuahua puppy and that her foot had slipped onto the accelerator. She said she tried to swerve away from the Buick before it passed a red light and slammed into the Buick, pushing it 127 feet down Oneida Street.

"It's a fast car," Geske testified. "Tapping on (the gas pedal) made it go really fast. I did not expect for my foot to go down reaching" for the dog.

Jurors convicted Geske of two counts of first-degree reckless homicide and one of recklessly endangering safety. Brown County Circuit Judge Sue Bischel, who has since retired, sentenced Geske to 80 years in prison followed by 40 years of extended supervision on the homicide counts and ordered her to pay $15,920.24 in restitution.

"This was more than just an accident," Knetzger said. "This was a crime."

— dschneid@greenbaypressgazette.com and follow him on Twitter @PGDougSchneider

On the net

Ashley Knetzger's story: http://www.ashleystory.org/