By admin 
Kevin Mays was standing in his kitchen in Idaho when he got the call that changed his life forever.
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It was his sister, Shawna Juve: She, along with their mother and Juve’s husband and son, had been in a wreck near Boise in March 2025. It looked bad for their mother, Erma “Jeanie” Mays.
Within five minutes, Mays was at the intersection in Meridian. There, he told the Idaho Statesman, he saw his sister and nephew being loaded into ambulances. And his mother, he said, holding back tears, was on the ground “behind a freakin’ electrical box.”
His sister, during an interview last month, finished explaining for him that their mother was being worked on by first responders, who had pulled her out of the vehicle. Mays was told to go to Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center.
As his mom, sister, brother-in-law and nephew were all being worked on, he waited in the emergency room as a doctor came out and said the words no one ever wants to hear: “We tried to resuscitate her, but she didn’t make it,” he recalled of the update on his mother.
Writing in a victim impact statement, he recalled shouting, “No, it can’t be.” His mother had died from multiple blunt force injuries as a result of the crash, according to the Ada County Coroner’s Office.
He, along with the rest of his family, would later learn that the driver of the Ford Explorer who T-boned his sister’s Kia Sorento had been high on meth when she ran the light — which had been red for 42 seconds.
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“Your reckless, selfish decision to get behind the wheel under the influence took my mother’s life — and shattered my family,” Mays told Emily Minow at her sentencing hearing. His family has since filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Minow and her then-boyfriend, who owned the Ford Explorer.
He asked 4th Judicial District Judge James Cawthon to sentence the 44-year-old to the maximum sentence under the law. In May, Minow pleaded guilty to two felonies: vehicular manslaughter and aggravated driving under the influence, both of which carry maximum sentences of 15 years.
Months later, in August, she was sentenced to the maximum punishment: 30 years. Minow will have to spend at least 10 years behind bars before she’s eligible to be released, with another 20 years she could spend in prison, on parole or both. She also received credit for the 525 days she already spent in custody.
Kevin’s wife, Cheryl Mays, remembered her mother-in-law as someone who would do anything for anybody. And Shawna’s husband, Kevin Juve, chimed in that she had “a heart of gold.”
When asked by the Idaho Statesman if there was anything else he wanted to share, Kevin Mays took a long pause to compose himself before describing having to see his mother after the accident and knowing there was only one reason for that.
“I want everybody to know that she did that to her,” he said, referring to Minow.
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