A woman whose three daughters were killed in a 2009 wrong-way drunken driving crash says she and her husband are expecting a baby.
Jackie Hance is speaking out for the first time since the wreck that killed eight people on the Taconic Parkway north of New York City.
"I want to be excited, but I know how random life can be, and how unfair," she tells Ladies Home Journal. "However much we try to protect our children, the worst can happen."
Her daughters were passengers in a van driven by their aunt when it slammed into another vehicle after traveling the wrong way for nearly two miles. The aunt, Diane Schuler, her daughter, and three men in the other vehicle, were killed.
Investigators later determined that Schuler was intoxicated and had recently been smoking marijuana.
Hance tells the magazine that she still struggles with the loss of her daughters, Emma, Alyson and Katie, ages 8, 7 and 5, and still has trouble accepting that her sister-in-law was responsible.
Some days it's hard to even go through the regular routines, she says. She stopped cooking because it reminded her of her children. She says she hates meeting new people because of having to explain what happened.
She and her husband still celebrate the girls' birthdays, she says.
"Since the accident I've spoken to other moms who've lost a child, and they usually say that they needed to stay strong for the children they still have. I didn't even have that," Hance says.
The baby is due in the fall.
