4:30 am: Jonathon Gragg
Hamilton, Ohio: Jonathon Gragg, 34, ran a busy painting business that did contract jobs for big builders. Boating and fishing were ways for this soft-spoken "outdoorsy guy" to unwind and spend extra time with his kids. "He had a very high work ethic," says his older sister, Carla Kearney. "He was really good at faux painting, specialty finish painting. He had really done well. He just had a good business mind." Gragg died in a single-vehicle crash. The night before he and cousin Donald Collins had installed new struts on Gragg's Pontiac Firebird, which he'd bought after his divorce the year before. Pain from the split was still fresh, his sister says. The men decided to go to Gragg's mother's bar, about an hour's drive away. Gragg visited with his mother over drinks, and when it was time for him to leave she told him to go sleep at his sister's house next door. Instead Gragg and his cousin decided to head back to Hamilton.
Police say Gragg wasn't belted and had a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.20 percent. His estimated speed was 71 mph. Kearney says her kid brother usually didn't drink and drive — or visit the bar their mother owned. "It was a fluke thing," she says. "The divorce is what devastated him." Gragg's mother "closed the bar down after that. She grieved over not taking his keys. She should have grabbed his keys, but she trusted him to do the right thing," Kearney says. "There sure is a lot of tragedy that comes from drinking and driving."
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"That's when the wreck happened," Kearney says. "He was driving at an excessive rate of speed. The driver's side hit a tree. He died instantly, and my cousin had minor injuries."