By PETER CALDER
Eddie McMullan took four bullets in Cyprus and served time in a Korean POW camp. Yesterday he went into battle again, in memory of his dead daughter, fighting to change the law of the land.
The justice and electoral select committee, sitting in a gloomy conference room in a Parnell motel, listened in silence as the 65-year-old veteran of the Royal Ulster Rifles recited the sadly familiar litany of his loss.
Nedrina, the 18-year-old only child of Eddie and his wife, Anne, died 31/2 years ago in the lower Kaimai Ranges near Tauranga after a repeat drunk driver slammed into the Mini van in which she was a passenger.
The driver, 37-year-old marine electrician Gregory Corbett Cameron, took a 35 km/h corner at 92 km/h and crossed the centre line. His blood-alcohol level was 21/2 times the legal limit.
Cameron, who had sideswiped another car only minutes before, was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to seven years in prison.
But he nearly got away with a careless-driving charge, and that angered the McMullans.
"We were pleased with the sentence," Mr McMullan recalled, "but that doesn't mean we were satisfied."
Last year, the Tauranga couple gathered more than 12,500 signatures on a petition seeking automatic manslaughter charges against drink-drivers who kill - and mandatory 10-year sentences, without parole, for those convicted.
The petition was presented last year but yesterday Mr McMullan had his half-hour with the lawmakers.
His eyes brimmed with tears as he apologised that his wife had not made the trip ("She's had a bad breakdown over this," he said) and he stopped often to gather wits quite evidently frayed by grief.
But, impeccable in his green regimental blazer and perfectly knotted regimental tie, he maintained his composure before the sympathetic MPs to speak unwaveringly in support of his cause.
Mr McMullan described as "a rather naive and silly statement" the Law Commission's opposition to mandatory charging - there is evidence, the commission says, that it makes juries reluctant to convict.
"It won't help Nedrina," he said, "but the prospect of a manslaughter charge might stop someone else getting into a car in a drunken state and killing someone else."
The Belfast native wears his war record proudly and has an unmistakably military bearing - he will tell you that Nedrina, after 14 days in intensive care, "slipped away at exactly 1400 hours."
But it's not all stiff upper lip. Sitting afterwards at a table on the terrace, he shows fingernails which "I just rip up from anxiety" and he has the faraway look of a man who has lost everything.
"You don't get over it," he had told the committee. "People say time heals everything and maybe it does, but we've lost our only child.
"I know there will be circumstances in which someone has a few drinks and goes down the road and someone runs out in front of them. Leave it to the judge. But make the charge manslaughter. It would make it a lot easier for us."
Mr McMullan was happy with his hearing. "I thought they would tell me that's the law and that's that."
But he doubted it would result in sudden change. "I can only say I hope so but the wheels of [Parliament] move very slowly.
"But we're not doing any more. My wife's had too much. We've both had too much. This is the last."
Parents fight for drink drive law
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