Kaila White

The Republic | azcentral.com

Joe Smith's white pickup is still parked outside his parents' north Phoenix home, a Nebraska Huskers frame around his license plate and a "sportsman" sticker on the back window.

His bedroom is almost exactly how he left it before his high-school graduation trip to California – decked-out camouflage, American flags and Nebraska souvenirs such as a smiling ear of corn, cluttered with golf clubs and Clive Cussler books.

The Smiths spent every Fourth of July since Joe was born in a small town in Nebraska, and it stuck with him. Steve Smith grows corn in their backyard, and earlier this year his son asked his date to prom in the corn field.

Joe dreamed of attending University of Nebraska-Lincoln and had gotten a scholarship to attend and study business. He had an entrepreneurial spirit – at 5 years old he began mowing lawns "professionally" and made business cards that said he was "friendly, dependable and honest."

"Our boy had an address at the university ... he was ready to move up there with mom a week or so after he was to return. That was his life’s dream, to be a Husker, and he never got to go to a single class," Joe's father said as he stood in his son's room, his voice cracking.

A picture frame in the hallway outside the bedroom holds Joe's last selfie, a photo of him smiling in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland the morning he died.

Four months ago, they lost their 18-year-old son in a horrific crash in which a semitruck driver hit two vehicles on Interstate 10 near Quartzsite, killing two people and seriously injuring four others.

Now, Tana and Steve Smith are speaking out against the law-enforcement system that so far has left the driver free.

MORE: Friends from Horizon High meet tragedy on post-graduation road trip

Lives lost and damaged, but no charges yet

The first accident early in the morning of Friday, June 17, did not injure anyone, but it left debris strewn across a rural two-lane stretch of highway, eventually slowing traffic to a stop.

A semi driver failed to notice the ribbon of stoplights on the highway straight ahead of him. At 3:11 a.m., the semi crashed into two stopped vehicles. One was carrying Joe and three of his best friends, who were coming home from a road trip to see Major League Baseball games in California.

The Arizona Department of Public Safety intended to recommend two charges of negligent manslaughter but "determined that no criminality was proven," a department spokesman said. The La Paz County Attorney’s Office was still reviewing the case.

"To have the legal aspect just fizzle has been a real kick in the stomach," Steve said, standing in Joe's room in October.

"You just can’t have two fatalities, one woman paralyzed, three massive injuries, those boys jammed into that refrigerator-sized wreck for two hours having the nightmare of their lives ... there should be some consequence."

Joseph Garcia, 74, also was killed and his wife, Mary Lou Garcia, was left paralyzed. The Garcia family has declined to talk publicly about the case, according to daughter-in-law Sandra Ruiz.

The northeast Phoenix community has rallied around the Smiths, and the three injured teens are making speedy recoveries, but the Smiths said the lack of criminal charges has added insult to injury.

MORE: Horizon High celebrates life of former student killed in crash

Tana: Too many inconsistencies in this story

DPS has primary responsibility for hazardous situations on Arizona freeways and for subsequent investigations. The Smiths expressed gratitude for all first-responders to the crash but are upset with certain elements of the investigation.

"I think the process has not gone smooth. I have the utmost respect for police officers — my father was a police officer — so I have the utmost respect for them, but I don’t think they did their job here," Tana said.

The Smiths' criticisms of the situation include three key points:

DPS' slow response. Although a DPS trooper was dispatched to the first accident at 2:23 a.m., the trooper did not arrive at the scene until moments after the second crash at 3:11 a.m. The Smiths have interpreted this as meaning DPS was "off duty."

DPS spokesman Damon Cecil said DPS covers Arizona 24 hours a day, although in rural locations that means there are early-morning hours when troopers are on call from their homes as opposed to actively working in a station or on the highway.

In cases when they know getting a trooper to the scene may take a while, DPS dispatchers will ask another agency to be the first-responder, Cecil said. In this case, a La Paz County Sheriff's Office trooper was the first to respond to the first crash.

The semitruck driver told troopers he was "tired," but DPS did not test the driver for drugs or alcohol. Records show that a trooper thought the 42-year-old semi driver "seemed lethargic and tired" after the accident and, when he asked if the driver was tired, the driver replied "yes." However, the driver's logbook showed he had gotten adequate sleep before working and was not over his legal maximum of driving hours.

Arizona law does not require that a driver be tested for drugs or alcohol after causing a fatal accident. Troopers must have "have reasonable suspicion that a person is under the influence" in order to test, Cecil said.

"If I simply say, 'I’m tired,' but I have no odor of alcohol or no indication they’re on prescription medications, that’s not enough for me to say I want your blood or urine. Someone simply saying 'I’m tired' is not enough," he said.

Failure to access phone activity. DPS investigators confiscated the driver's phone but could not extract information from it because they did not have the passcode. There is no indication in the records that DPS asked the driver for his passcode. A court order to Verizon Wireless turned up "no information or data" such as call records or location information.

Cecil cited a case earlier this year in which the FBI was unable to unlock an iPhone belonging to one of the gunmen in the December terrorist attack in San Bernardino until an "outside party" hacked the phone without Apple’s help.

In the end, DPS found no evidence of distracted driving. The Republic is not naming the semi driver because he has not been charged with a crime.

The lack of answers has left the Smiths not only grieving but frustrated.

"Closure would be a consequence. Closure would be that that man would never drive again. Closure would be some jail time for him to think about his consequences," Tana said.

A possible mission: Change the law

Whether or not the La Paz County attorney pursues criminal charges, Tana said she wants to change the law so that drivers in fatal accidents always are immediately tested for drugs and alcohol.

"I assumed that that’s what the law was, and since it’s not, it needs to change," she said. "I’ll do whatever I can do to change this because this is something that can affect anybody at any time."

She plans to write to U.S. Sen. John McCain and Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton about the issue soon.

"Not that it will change the outcome — nothing will change the outcome — but that’s still hanging over us. We’ll never know."

Community support continues

As the legal review of the accident continues in La Paz County, people from Phoenix Horizon High School and nearby communities have continued to support the family relentlessly.

The school let them host Joe's memorial service on campus, providing them space for the roughly 1,000 guests that showed up from every facet of Joe's life. Even customers who met Joe while he worked at Hobe Meat butcher shop attended.

Joe played hockey for the Horizon Huskies hockey team, which won the Division II state championship in February. His parents said he scored the final goal in that game.

The team retired his number, 33; renamed an award after him; and designed a patch for their jerseys to honor him, an American flag design with the inscription "JS33."

For Tana's birthday in September, she and Steve went to a Horizon Huskies game and, even though she said the team didn't know she was coming, at the end of the game they presented her with flowers.

A few teens created camouflage wristbands that say #notyouraveragejoe and sold them to raise money for Joe's younger sister, Jamie. They raised about $1,000 for her to use to get out of the house and have fun. Many of Joe's friends, including his girlfriend, come over regularly to take Jamie out for coffee or to the mall.

Finding a new normal

At home, the family is trying to regroup, to create new patterns from the old ones torn apart.

"Everything in our family is different, the whole dynamic, so instead of being the little sister — she’s always going to be a little sister — but... she’s it now," Tana said of Jamie, who just started sixth grade.

She had just reached the age when "he was able to share more of his personality with her," Steve said, "rather than being the big brother guiding her all the time.

"That was just starting to blossom, so it’s just devastating for her to miss out on getting to know her older bother in that more adult-sibling friend way rather than having big brother the teacher," he said.

"Or big brother the antagonist," Tana added, chuckling.

Although most of Joe's room is as it was, not everything is the same: His bed has become a makeshift memorial, covered in photos, posters and mementos of his life. A small box holding his remains sits near his pillow. Nearby is the last photo Joe took with his parents, at his graduation party a few days before he left for California.

"Don’t think for a moment that the legal aspect is our 100 percent focus. It is absolutely not. But it is a baffling scenario right now, and one of the things that's hard to process is why this didn’t go better," Steve said, standing next to the bed.

"I just think our main goal is to let the world know that Joe was incredible and he was stopped in his tracks for something that shouldn’t have happened."

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