Jan 10, 2007 5:59 am US/Central
Mother Of Irving Officer Killed By Texas 7 Dies
Jayne Hawkins Became Outspoken Critic Of Texas Prison System After 2000 Escape
DALLAS (AP) ―
Jayne Hawkins, who became an outspoken critic of the Texas prison system after her police officer son was gunned down by seven escaped inmates in 2000, has died. She was 62.
Hawkins, a Dallas interior designer, died Saturday after battling leukemia, Irving police said.
Her only child, Irving police officer Aubrey Hawkins, was eating Christmas Eve dinner with his family when he was called to respond to suspicious activity at a sporting goods store in the Dallas suburb.
The 29-year-old officer interrupted a robbery by seven inmates who had escaped 11 days earlier from the maximum-security Connally Unit, about 60 miles southeast of San Antonio. The group shot him 11 times and repeatedly ran over him with the getaway car.
Over the next several years Jayne Hawkins testified at all six of the inmates' trials and sat in the courtroom as they were sentenced to death. The seventh had committed suicide as authorities were about to capture them in Colorado several weeks after her son's murder.
"I realized how much I wanted them to get the ultimate sentence -- not because it was the death penalty but because they did commit the ultimate crime," Hawkins told The Associated Press in November 2003 after the final inmate's trial. "Whether (the maximum sentence in Texas) is the death penalty or not the death penalty is not up to me. And I could never pull the switch."
Hawkins also told the AP that she did not plan to witness the executions of her son's killers, who remain on Texas' death row.
"I want to move on with my life with a happy heart, as happy as it can be," Hawkins said in 2003. "I want to be as happy as Aubrey would want me to be, because he was such a happy soul. What is my alternative?"
After a Texas Department of Criminal Justice report concluded that employees violated several security procedures that allowed the inmates to escape, Hawkins filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the state, which was dismissed in 2005. After she was ordered to pay the state's expenses, she expressed outraged and said she would refuse to pay.
Besides prison reform, Hawkins was a vocal advocate of gun control, women's rights, animal rights and the arts.
She is survived by her grandson, Andrew Hawkins, and by her brother, James Sellars.
At Hawkins' request, no funeral service will be held. Memorial gifts may be made to the SPCA of Texas or The Family Place.
(© 2007 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
