"Life isn't about getting high:" Father makes emotional plea from his young daughter's gravesite
CABOT, Arkansas (WITI) -- A man stands in a cemetery, holds out his phone and presses record. He wants to show you something.
His voice is honest and pained. It's the voice of a man who lost his six-year-old daughter to a drunk driver. He says the driver was the girl's mother.
"I'm gonna tell you something. Live isn't about getting high." That's how Rick Ellis starts a video...recorded at his six-year-old daughter's grave site.
"If I can help anybody -- I want you to listen to me," Ellis says in the video.
Ellis says his six-year-old daughter was killed -- the result of a mother who "wanted to drink and get high."
"It didn't work out too well," Ellis says in the video.
Ellis made the video to show people what can be the end result of their party on Friday night.
In the video, Ellis says "you want to be stupid? This is what happens."
Then, the video pans to a grave, bearing the names of Christy Johnson Ellis and Lindsey Kay Ellis.
Ellis says his daughter, Lindsey was killed in a drunk driving accident -- after her mother had been partying for two days -- staying up all night, drinking whiskey and having fun.
"Everything was great, right?" Ellis says in the video. "Well it ain't so great now."
Ellis says in the crash, his daughter died instantly. He says both his daughter and her mother were crushed instantly in Beaumont, Mississippi.
Ellis says his daughter's mother tried to drive home from Gulf Shores, Alabama, after her boyfriend had beaten her up.
Christy and Lindsey never made it back to Arkansas.
"If you are struggling with addiction, if you are struggling with alcohol, I hope this can help you," Ellis says in the video. "Don't let your loved ones look down on you -- six feet in the ground because you couldn't handle life."
Ellis ends the video with: "There's plenty of drunks in this world. You don't need to be one."