Family offers encouragement, forgiveness to driver in fatal drunken crash

Deborah Harr looked forward to her husband's approaching retirement.

Tim Harr, a die-hard Kansas City Chiefs fan, planned to retire in October 2022, hoping to use his time fishing, making art and making memories with his son in Austin.

"He loved sitting on the porch and watching the birds," she said. "The Bluejays were his favorite."

But more importantly, she said Tim had hoped to spend his time helping people battling addiction as he did most of his life.

She said her husband struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction for decades, even going to prison for a DWI conviction.

However, Tim Harr never got to see that future.

Harr, who worked for a landscape maintenance company, was inflating the tire on his tractor on the side of the road when he was struck by a drunken driver.

"It’s so ironic that he was almost 15 years sober from alcohol to be killed by a drunk driver," Deborah Harr said.

For eight years, her husband also struggled with methamphetamine addiction. In 2017, after being baptized as a born-again Christian, Tim went through a recovery program.

"He became a completely different man from that time forward," she said. "He had so many struggles but we worked through them all."

Three months before he died, Tim Harr experienced an even deeper breakthrough.

Tim had been able to forgive himself, Deborah said.

"He was free physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually," she said. "For the first time in his life, he was truly free."

With five years of sobriety from drugs under his belt, he was ready to work as a mentor at a recovery program and share his insights.

"He was so excited to go spread that happiness and newly found forgiveness to others," Harr said. "Suffering from childhood trauma, guilt, self-hate, emotional trauma and abuse, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and rejection. He understood all of these things all too well. He wished everyone could have the freedom from any and all addictions. He longed to tell his story to help save others."

On Thursday, Harr asked the woman who killed her husband to carry on his dream of helping others in their struggle with addiction after she is released from prison.

"Had Tim forgiven himself years ago, he could have been your mentor," she said. "As a matter of fact, let him be your mentor now. In all of this, Tim has message for you and your family: 'Forgive yourself, don’t wait, love yourself a little more each day.' I hope you do everything positive for yourself. When you get released, I hope you advocate for young people before they end up in our situation. You can do the work Tim never got to do."

Stephanie Marie Fair, who has been out on bond since May 4, 2023, was sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to a count of intoxication manslaughter as part of a plea deal with the Lubbock County District Attorney's Office.

The offense is a second-degree felony that carries a punishment of two to 20 years in prison.

More than a dozen of Harr's family members attended the hearing to witness Fair admitting to being intoxicated when she drove her 2018 Dodge pickup eastbound about 4 p.m. on Oct. 14, 2022, on FM 2641 striking Timothy Lee Harr, who was on the side of the road, inflating a low tire on the front right of his company's 2015 John Deere Tractor towing a shredder.

Fair will have to serve half of her sentence before she is eligible to apply for parole as the court found that her vehicle was deadly weapon.

Fair, who was not wearing a seatbelt, was uninjured, the release states.

According to a probable cause affidavit filed at the Lubbock County jail, a responding trooper was told by paramedics that Fair refused treatment and appeared to be intoxicated.

The trooper asked Fair for her driver's license and helped her stand up from a seated position. The trooper noted that Fair was unsteady on her feet, slurred her speech and had red, glassy, bloodshot eyes.

The trooper could also smell the odor of alcohol on Fair's breath.

The trooper wrote that Fair reportedly agreed to take a standard field sobriety test but refused to follow his directions.

Fair was arrested and booked into the Lubbock County Detention Center on a charge of intoxication manslaughter.

Fair reportedly consented to a blood draw but the trooper noted that she became uncooperative after and threw her jewelry in the pre-booking area at the jail.

Court records show Fair spent about 203 days at the Lubbock County Detention Center before she was released on bond.

Fair's attorney, Michael LeMond said his client was remorseful, saying the crash was a turning point in her life. He said Fair resisted bonding out and spent seven months in jail after her initial arrest working on her sobriety.

He said Harr's family supported her release on bond to an in-patient substance abuse facility. She later transitioned to an out-patient facility before moving in with family.

LeMond said while Fair awaited the disposition of her case, she volunteered as a Certified Nursing Assistant caring for the elderly and infirm.

Harr said she fought through the pain and grief welling inside her as she spoke in court to deliver her victim impact statement.

Harr shared her heartache as she learned about her husband's death while waiting in line to dinner from his favorite restaurant. She was on the phone with her niece, who was speaking with Texas Troopers and overheard them say that her husband was killed in a car crash.

"I ran out of the restaurant and got to the car and started praying and screaming," she said

She said her husband was loved by his friends and family and he loved them.

"Tim was loyal to his family and friends" she said. "He was the absolute love of my life."

The couple was six weeks away from celebrating their 19th anniversary of a marriage that had its ups and down particularly with her husband's drug addiction.

"I was so happy with Tim's change," she said. "I finally got what I fasted and fought for so hard."

Harr told Fair that her decision to drink and drive that day also cost her a decade's long teaching career.

She had planned to keep teaching for at least five more years but decided to end her career in December.

She said the heartbreak from her husband's death changed her, made her impatient with her students and quick to anger.

Harr, who also suffered a stroke nearly five years ago, said her grief was taking a physical toll on her heart.

"I started yelling at the kids, I wasn't that kind of a teacher," she said. "I had no patience for anyone anymore. I knew that wasn’t me, I had pushed the pain down too far and it was starting to affect my physical body. My heart was beating so fast and then it would drop and that would make me feel like I was going to pass out. I knew I wasn’t going to last the whole school year like that."

Harr told Fair that her momentary decision to drink and drive cost her a future with the man she had waited so long for.

Despite her grief, Harr said she never held a grudge against Fair. Before walking back to her seat in the courtroom, Harr asked Judge Douglas Freitag if she could hug Fair. However, the request violated courtroom security policies and was denied.

"Forgiveness only hurts the person that is unforgiving," she said. "It doesn't hurt the other person and I didn't want to open that door for the enemy to come in and have bitterness -- no, I don't want that. And so, I have never, never had unforgiveness towards her. Ever. Not one time."

Harr said her life with Tim and seeing his struggles gave her the ability to show compassion to Fair.

"I couldn't really blame Stephanie," she said after the hearing. "Because how, at 4 o clock (in the afternoon) she was five times the legal amount? I understood she had way more problems at that point for her to be drinking that much ... I do not believe that she said, 'I'm just going to kill somebody today' ... She was drowning on her own problems ..."

However, Harr said her compassion for Fair didn't outweigh her desire for justice.

"I didn't want her to get off on probation, because I don't think that would serve justice for Tim," she said.

With Fair's sentence, Harr said she can finally move on with her life.

"I went and got my grandchildren (after the hearing) and I was laughing with them and doing stuff," she said. "I couldn't have done that a week ago. No, I couldn't because there was such a sadness on me that I couldn't. (Fair's sentence) felt like a release that I can actually go on with my life and see what God really wants me to do."

Jennifer Anderson, Harr's stepdaughter, told Fair that her actions that day shattered her family.

"My once happy family was now in shambles," she said. "Losing Tim affected my life so severely."

She said her two older sons saw Harr as a father and miss him terribly. Her third son was 8-months old when Harr was killed and will never get to know him.

"I don't get to see him smile anymore or hear his voice," she said. "I don't get a hug anymore. He's gone. the things that used to make me mad when he'd gripe about stuff, now I wish I could hear him gripe."

She said her mother was a shell of the happy and bubbly woman she once was.

"I watched her slowly die and turn into someone she didn't know anymore," she said.

Harr's son, Tim Harr Jr., wrote Fair a letter that was read by a family member in court.

He told Fair that he and his father reconnected in recent years and were building the father-son relationship he had longed for most of his life.

However, her decision to drink and drive that day robbed him of time he hoped to make up for the lost years.

"I can't describe how hard it hit me," he said. "I never knew I had so many tears. I say all of this with no malice, no hate in my heart. Only to share the impact your decision can have on others."

He told Fair to continue her path of sobriety and to spend her time in prison improving herself.

"I ask only that you don't give up," he said. "Use your time in prison wisely. Use the library, study something that you've had an interest in, but couldn't find the time for previously.

"By all means succeed. Don't let my dad's death be in vain. He would not have wanted it to be your downfall, but more so your opportunity to break free from your inner struggles and find peace."

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Family offers forgiveness to driver in fatal drunken crash