CAMDEN COUNTY, Ga. – Put down the phone. That is the message a Camden County father is spreading across the nation after his son was killed by a distracted driver.
Austin Ardman, a Blinn College sophomore in College Station, Texas went for a jog December 8, 2015. The 20-year-old would never come home.
“It was ten o'clock. He was in the right place, doing the right thing, staying healthy. He had been to school and work and went for a jog.”
Neal Ardman was sound asleep at his home in Camden County when he got a call he will never forget.
“I have six children, two grandchildren. The phone rings in the middle of the night, and it's never good. The phone rings and it’s my ex-wife. Austin had been killed.”
His son he says plowed down by a distracted driver who, according to a police report, "took her eyes off the road."
“The coroner's report came back, and it's important to say neither he nor the driver had anything in their system, both as clean as a whistle,” said Ardman. “She admitted to police on the scene that she picked up her phone. It went off and as a result of that she drove off the road and hit my son at 60 miles an hour.”
Ardman never got to say goodbye. He'll never get to see his son get married. He'll never get to spend another Christmas with him. All he says because of a split second decision, a decision you may be faced with every day, whether or not you pick up your phone while driving.
“It happened in a millisecond. It happened in the kind of time none of us can begin to imagine. It's instantaneous,” said Ardman. “It's final. There is no getting him back. I can't get him back, his brothers, his sisters, his nieces, his mother can't get him back.”
The most recent government numbers show in 2013 in the U.S. more than 3,000 people were killed in crashes involving distracted drivers and more than 420,000 were injured.
“I'm searching the Internet every day and there is a new texting and driving fatality. It's an epidemic,” said Ardman. “Texting is becoming a more vicious murderer than drunk driving. We can spot drunk drivers driving down the road, police can see the behavior…A text happens in a second. There is no warning.”
Ardman produced a Public Service Announcement to put a face on the staggering statistics. He doesn't want any other family to have to endure the pain he now lives with every single day.
“My 6-year-old looks at me and says his brother lives in his heart and every time I think about it I tear up and every time he says it I lose it. How can we replace brothers and sisters. We are losing our families for what, a text message?”
Jessica Escue, Assistant District Attorney in Bryan, Texas tells First Coast News the case is still under investigation by the police department. No charges have been filed.