OCEAN CITY — “We were on our way home from friends, about five minutes from home. We came to an intersection. Our light was green and we started to cross over the intersection and the driver of the other car hit us T-bone and my husband was killed almost instantly,” Tina Bontya said.
Just more than a year has passed since the drunken driving crash that claimed her husband’s life Oct. 11, 2025, at the corner of Berlin Cross Keys Road and Johnson Road in Williamstown.
The 23-year-old driver responsible for the crash that took the life of the U.S. Army veteran who served in Vietnam was charged with aggravated manslaughter.
Bontya’s story was one of many similar ones told by those gathered Oct. 18 for the 15th annual John R. Elliott HERO Walk & Fun Run on the Ocean City Boardwalk.
Bill and Muriel Elliott of Egg Harbor Township started the HERO Campaign for Designated Drivers, partnering with police departments, bars and restaurants, sports teams and others to try to prevent drunken driving deaths. Their son, U.S. Navy Ensign John Elliott, was traveling home from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., on July 22, 2000, when a drunken driver crashed into his vehicle, killing both men on Route 40 in Salem County.
In summer 2001, New Jersey enacted John’s Law, which requires police to impound the vehicles of those arrested for drunken driving for 12 hours, closing a loophole that allowed the motorist who killed Elliott to return to his car after being released from jail.
Bontya said the young driver was speeding at 90 mph on a local road and his blood alcohol content was three times the legal limit.
She said she deals with the grief “one minute at a time.”
“I’m going to therapy. I read helpful books and I have a wonderful, absolutely wonderful support system with my family and friends,” Bontya said.
The 76-year-old said she had never heard of the HERO Campaign prior to her husband’s death.
“Actually it was my stepdaughter who found it because we were looking for something, some positive way to focus our energy,” Bontya said, noting her husband was 32 years sober.
“He lived that sober life every single day, one day at a time,” she said, noting the family is now undergoing a trial for the driver.
John Price said his stepfather was very active in assisting people with problems.
“He was very dedicated and involved for 20, 30 years and helped out a lot of people and helped a lot of people stay on the straight and narrow, and for him to die like that, just the ultimate irony,” Price said.
He said bringing the family together with others who have faced the same thing was really helpful.
“That’s a positive thing. I mean, it can only help, you know, it can only help bringing people together and just making people aware. If you have one or two or three or four, don’t go behind the wheel, you know,” Price said.
– STORY and PHOTOS by CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff
