Crash survivor is willing to forgive
Clifton Park driver, 29, to serve 4 to 12 years for role in two deaths
A woman who survived a deadly crash said she wants to forgive the driver, Lindsay Godfrey, for the Aug. 8, 2020 incident that killed her husband and mother.
Jill Chadwick spoke at the Godfrey’s sentencing on Friday at the Washington County Court, where the 29-year-old driver from Clifton Park was sentenced to 4 to 12 years for causing the death of 43-year-old Richard “DJ” Chadwick and 77-year-old Alice Hahn. Chadwick, who was returning home from Vermont with her family, has recovered from her injuries in the State Route 313 crash, but remains traumatized.
“As I said in my victim impact statement, one of the things I said to Lindsay was she could never understand what we lost that day,” Chadwick told the Times Union on Monday. “We lost a mother, a son, a brother. I lost my husband. We lost a grandmother. We lost our cherished loved one and children of God.”
But she also said that she wants to forgive Godfrey and hopes to visit her in prison, if that is allowed.
“It must be very hard to live, knowing what you did to a family,” Chadwick said. “Some might see an arrest and handcuff and being taken away as a good thing. I see it as a sad thing. There is more hurt. Nobody wins. Nobody feels good when that happens. It’s very unfortunate, the decisions she made in her life. I feel bad for her family, too.”
District Attorney Tony Jordan said that Chadwick’s victim impact statement “was very powerful.”
“She talked about the difficulties and pain that the choices that Lindsay made had on her and her family,” Jordan said. “But even more powerful was when she told her that ‘I know I need to forgive you.’ She said she prays for you every day and hopes that she finds recovery.”
Godfrey, who was represented in court by attorney Matt Chauvin, was convicted of vehicular manslaughter. At the time of her crash, her blood alcohol was 0.12 percent and she had marijuana in her system. Chauvin, when contacted by the Times Union Monday, said he didn't have time to answer questions about the case and hung up on a reporter. He previously told the Post-star that Godfrey had ongoing issues with substance abuse.
Chadwick, a Cambridge Central School elementary music teacher, broke her ankle and some fingers in the crash.
Chadwick’s husband DJ was also a teacher. He spent 18 years at Hoosic Valley Central School teaching special education. The Chadwicks were heavily involved in their church, the Adamsville Baptist Church, and the Gideons International, which distributes bibles worldwide.
Chadwick’s mother was retired, spending 20 years as the director of environmental services at the now shuttered Mary Mcclellan Hospital. Her husband, Harvey, of 50 years died in 2019.
“I lost three close family members in a year’s time,” Chadwick said. “It’s very hard. It’s the most difficult thing I had to do in my life.”
Jordan said Godfrey also made a statement, which also surprised him, because she took full responsibility for her actions that day as she was going to meet friends for a tubing trip down the Batten Kill River.
“Seldom do you here a statement from a defendant to the court that is not self-serving,” Jordan said. “She basically said she was so scared to speak not because she would say something wrong but because she didn’t want to make (Chadwick’s) suffering worse.”
Jordan said Godfrey has little to no criminal history and that the court needed to weigh that and other factors when Judge Kelly Mckeighan sentenced her.
“I was asked if it was fair,” Jordan said. “I said there is nothing fair about it. But we did have to find a balance and consistency in the sentence. But it doesn’t change Jill’s world.”