Right. Hannah Gilley's family members also could speak at sentencing, giving a victim impact statement.
Chris Graves
October 25th 2016
Andrea Carver bolted up in bed at precisely 3:45 a.m. April 22, sucked in her breath and gripped her chest.
A sound sleeper, Carver couldn't shake the sickening feeling that wouldn't let her rest again. So she put on a pot of coffee and got to her day.
A mother feels things.
The call came about her youngest child, Hannah Hazel Gilley, just hours later.
The caller simply said there had been an accident involving Hannah and her fiance, Clarence "Frankie" Rhoden. Carver was needed up on Union Hill Road because Pike County's child protection services was going to take the couple's 6-month-old son, her grandson.
She thought of her son-in-law to be, who she knew adored her blue-eyed, blonde-haired 20-year-old daughter and their baby, Ruger Lee Rhoden.
Damn it, Frankie, she thought, you always did drive too fast. It was the only thing she ever worried about concerning him. She was going to give him a piece of her mind when she saw him.
A mother hopes against hope.
But sheriff's squad cars blocked Union Hill Road by the time she and her husband, who worked with Frankie at a local sawmill, got there. She pleaded with them to tell her what was going on. She begged for any information. She was hollering at them and, as the minutes wore on, screaming.