Family of drive-by victim: 'She quit the drugs but she didn't quit her friends. That's what ended up killing her'
Wendy Jo Whitaker By Laura Rillos KVAL NewsEUGENE, Ore. -- Wendy Jo Whitaker's parents thought they might lose her to drugs. But their adult daughter beat her methamphetamine addiction, only to die in a drug related shooting intended for Whitaker's boyfriend. Whitaker was killed in a drive-by shooting in September 2008, as she sat in a car in her Springfield neighborhood. Another vehicle, carrying Ronald Smith and Michael Wesley Jr., pulled up alongside her car. Smith fired, hitting Whitaker.
Smith testified in a Lane County courtroom those bullets were intended for Whitaker's boyfriend, Jesse Anderson, because of a bad drug deal.
Wesley was sentenced to 30 years in prison for Whitaker's murder, the attempted murder of Anderson and for ramming an undercover Springfield police officer with his car the day after the shooting. The officer fired at Wesley, paralyzing him from the chest down. Smith is serving a 25-year prison sentence. At Wesley's sentencing hearing Tuesday, Larry Whitaker spoke about Wendy's drug addiction. She started using meth in her teens, he said, but beat that addiction when she realized it was affecting her relationship with her son, now 15 "It's just an incredibly, incredibly difficult thing to do," Lynda Whitaker said of her daughter's attempt to stop using meth. "She quit the drugs but she didn't quit her friends. I think that's equally as important. That's what ended up killing her." "Wendy loved Jesus," said Lynda Whitaker. "And we know that we will see her again because we do, too." |
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"I think the fact she overcame her drug use finally, and the irony that it ended up killing her after all just because she didn't change her friends," said Lynda Whitaker, Wendy's mother.
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