The Rest of the Story: Family trying to cope with loss of siblings

Six months after a late-night car crash claimed the lives of his only two children, Ronald Smith still is barely able to talk about it.

Just before 3 a.m. July 3, Tara and Tearle Davis were on their way home from a dance in Farmville when their car collided with another head-on. The Virginia State Police said a Rustburg man was driving drunk the wrong way on U.S. 460 in Prince Edward County when he struck the siblings' vehicle.

The loss is almost unbearable, Smith said. He is trying not to dwell on it, though people still bring it up.

 “I’m trying to go on,” he said. “They’re resting in peace.”

Tara, 23, and Tearle, 21, each left behind a child. Smith and their grandmother, Ann Brown, are raising Tara’s five-year-old son Shawn at the home they share on Federal Street.

“Shawn has always been with us. He loves his granddaddy. He thinks his granddaddy fell from heaven,” Brown said. “He looked at me one day when they were talking to him about his mother and his uncle. He’ll tell anyone now, ‘they’ve gone to heaven.’ He looks at you and he understands.”

They don’t hear much about Tearle’s child, who lives in North Carolina, she said.

Meanwhile, Caleb M. Evans, 21, stands charged with drunk driving and two counts of DUI manslaughter.

According to the Virginia State Police, the collision between Evans’ Ford Explorer and Tara Davis’ Dodge PT Cruiser was so severe, her car burst into flames. Brown said police told the family Evans was driving without lights on, and at speeds of up to 80 miles per hour.

Evans was released on bond from the Piedmont Regional Jail in Farmville July 11.

His history of alcohol-related crimes goes back three years in Campbell County General District Court. In December 2009, he was charged with being a minor in possession of alcohol. Online case information says the charge was dismissed, but indicates his driver’s license was suspended for six months and he was ordered to attend the Virginia Alcohol Safety Action Program. In April 2010, he was arrested again on charges of being a minor in possession of alcohol and drunk in public. He was fined and his driver’s license suspended again for another six months.

His preliminary hearings in Prince Edward County General District Court in the Davis case have been delayed twice.

Evans is now set to appear the afternoon of Feb. 6.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Ennis said the hearings have been delayed while prosecutors awaited autopsy results from the medical examiner’s office and toxicology tests from the Virginia Department of Forensic Science. The toxicology reports are still outstanding, Ennis said last week.

Notice of the delay in the last hearing, set for Dec. 5, was slow in coming, Brown said. Two carloads of friends and family were on their way to the Farmville courthouse when they learned it had been cancelled. The family was under the impression the delays were caused by Evans’ lawyer, which is not the case.

For his part, Smith said he wants people to know he doesn’t believe his children’s deaths were the result of a “car accident.”

In some ways, he said, he believes his children had some indication their time on Earth was coming to an end. Tearle told a friend a few weeks beforehand he believed he would die one day in a car wreck, Davis said.

“If God calls them home, I have no problem with it. I can’t hold grudges,” he said.

“God doesn’t make mistakes. When God has a plan to take you home, you can’t avoid it.”