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Widow of trucker killed while retrieving hazard cones says her husband “would have forgiven instantly”

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The widow of a trucker recently struck and killed by an impaired driver says that her husband would have forgiven the man instantly had he survived the incident. 

Stanley Gumm Jr. was killed on January 19th in North Carolina, and the trucker’s widow is speaking out about her husband’s forgiving demeanor and the dangers of impaired driving just over a week later. 

“Pure grace, pure favor, pure mercy. He didn’t just walk it. He talked it. He walked it. He lived it. He breathed it and he stood like a pillar,” Loretta Gumm recalled of her late husband. 

“He loved to explore. He loved nature. He loved sunsets and sunrises and showing me things that I had never seen because I was a small-town girl and he was a city boy.”

Apart from his overall forgiving personality, Loretta says she knows Gumm would forgive 53-year-old Daniel Ray Thompson for crashing into him while impaired because Gumm had been charged with driving while intoxicated just a few years back and had since turned over a new leaf. 

“My husband would say, ‘you know that could have been me that killed somebody driving home drunk’. I know he would have forgiven him instantly because that’s who my husband was,” explained Loretta.

“I hope he [Thompson] takes this moment and he sits in it and he marinates in it and he becomes half the husband that I had, half the man that I had, half the father that my children had,” she continued. 

Despite the forgiveness, Loretta still believes something needs to be done about impaired driving, and says she will be in court when Thompson faces a judge.  

“We gotta stop it and the laws need to be stricter.”

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