Alcohol and Phone-Call Details in Wrong-Way Crash

[FarCenter]

By AL BAKER and SERGE F. KOVALESKI - Published: August 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/08/nyregion/08crash.html?th&emc=th

The husband of the intoxicated woman who killed herself and seven others after driving the wrong way on the Taconic State Parkway said Friday that they carried the same bottle of vodka every weekend between their home and a campground during the summer.
...
Mr. Ruskin said on Friday that phone records showed that four calls were logged on Ms. Schuler’s cellphone in the last hours of her life — two incoming calls and two outgoing ones.

He said that Ms. Schuler called her brother, Warren Hance, at 11:37 a.m., to say that she was in traffic, “running a bit late,” but that her nieces would be home in time for a scheduled performance rehearsal. At 12:08 p.m., Ms. Schuler received a call, but it is not yet known who made the call, Mr. Ruskin said.

Emma Hance called her father at 12:58 p.m. and said, “Daddy, there is something wrong with Aunt Diane and she is having trouble seeing and she is talking funny, she is slurring,” Mr. Ruskin said. That call was dropped after three minutes and Mr. Hance called back at 1:01 p.m., in a conversation that lasted nine minutes.
<snip>

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It is looking more like murder-suicide by automobile.

The second call at 12:08 will be key. It may well have been what set her to drinking and then committing murder-suicide.

It's likely that she took the cell phone away from the 8-year old and threw it out the window, which accounts for it's being "abandoned" near the east end of the Tappan Zee bridge.

The crash at 1:35 was on the Taconic in Briarcliff, which is north of there and not on the way to Long Island, since she came across the Tappan Zee on her way from Sullivan County to Long Island.

[Eric J in MN]

1. I don't see how you get from the article that she wanted to die. NT

NT

[stray cat]

2. Angry about being discovered drinking sounds possible but nothing more

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

4. Knowing the Taconic as well as I do, I believe it had to be suicide. On an early

Sunday afternoon there is enough traffic for her to have seen that she was going in the wrong direction, and enough areas on the side of the road to comfortably pull into and turn herself around. Yet she drove on that road of almost 2 miles before crashing. No matter how drunk she might have been, I cannot see her driving that long at that time of day and not correct herself, unless she intended to do what she did.

[FarCenter]

6. There are several factors

- drinking to a blood alcohol level of 0.19% is not social drinking. And she had more in her stomach according to other reports.

- if the cell phone had aslo been used by the 8-year old to talk to her father, the chances are that it was discarded, rather than abandoned.

- you have to deliberately drive north instead of staying on the main I-287 or I-87 routes from the Tappan Zee towards Long Island to get to the crash scene about a half hour later.

- other cars on the Taconic had swerved out of her way. Yet she hit the Trail Blazer head on. Pretty squarely too, also from other pictures.

[hedgehog]

3. What's not clear to me is who called 911 and when. Did

multiple police agencies blow off calls about a someone acting erratically and a brother calling to say his sister was ill somewhere between points A and B?

[Historic NY]

11. There is no evidence anyone called prior to the accident at this time..

all calls are recorded at the County 911 centers. Calling a State Police or County Police Barracks outside 911 for an emergency is extremely unlikely and uncommon.

[FarCenter]

13. It seems that other drivers called from the Taconic

There are conflicting reports as to whether drivers on 17 and I87 called Orange County or Rockland County 911. There apparently are eyewitness reports of her driving erratically on those roads leading from Sullivan County to the bridge. However, the reports of drivers on the Taconic calling 911 seem concrete.

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From http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local-beat/Taconic-Driver-Was-Drunk-High-Report-52439867.html

Diane Schuler, a 36-year-old executive with Cablevision, was driving south in the northbound lanes of the Taconic for two miles as motorists sought in vain to get her attention; six drivers called 911 before the collision with the SUV.

State police, who have been retracing her route, said that witnesses reported seeing her red Ford mini-van on both state Routes 17 and 87. They said the van was straddling two lanes, tailgating, flashing its headlights and beeping the horn.

Others saw the vehicle veering from one lane to another and one witness said it appeared as if she was attempting to pass him on the shoulder of the highway. Another witness said the van drove across a grass divider at the Ramapo service area on Route 87.

State police said while they can't be absolutely certain the driver was Schuler, the description of the vehicle and occupants and the time the incidents were reported "lead them to believe they are one in the same."

[ima_sinnic]

5. why would anyone carry "the same bottle of vodka every weekend betw their home and a campground"?

was it in the car only on weekends? did they go to a campground "every" friggin weekend?
or was it simply always in the car? was it full or empty?
more importantly, why carry a bottle of any kind of booze in your car if not to drink?
this makes no sense at all and sounds absolutely lame.

[customerserviceguy]

7. That bottle

would be especially accessible to kids, especially teenagers in a campground who always knew about Aunt Diane's bottle.

I was willing to give the husband the benefit of the doubt (my ex was quite the closet drinker, didn't really know the full extent of the problem until she moved out and I found cleverly hidden empty bottles) but since he's admitted that there was always a bottle of vodka in the car, he's starting to look like someone who only wants to cover his ass.

[FarCenter]

8. And once you broke the seal, you can't just carry it in a van

Unless it is in a locked compartment. In which case it likely wouldn't be under a seat.

[uncle ray]

9. in a van you put it in the rearmost part and you won't get hassled.

as long as you have not been drinking and the bottle isn't within reach of the driver, the open bottle isn't a problem.

[TorchTheWitch]

12. read the article

Tom Ruskin, an investigator who is working for the husband, Daniel Schuler, said that Mr. Schuler occasionally drank vodka and that his wife, Diane, was so frugal that she packed the same bottle of Absolut in a bag meant for trips between the family’s home in Suffolk County, on Long Island, and the camper in the Sullivan County campground they had frequented for the past three years. He said a single bottle could last a year for the Schulers.

But Mr. Ruskin said Mr. Schuler did not see the bottle that day, and was not sure whether his wife had packed the bottle in the bags he loaded into the minivan that Ms. Schuler drove from the campground. “He did not pack it, he did not see it,” Mr. Ruskin said. “As far as he knows, it is still in the camper, but I haven’t been up there and none of the investigative staff has checked it out as of yet.”

He's trying to make it appear that his wife was a very sparse drinker and he had no idea whether or not alcohol was in the car or not even though he also says that they always had that vodka bottle in the car on their camping trips and even though he knows that a bottle of vodka was found under the seat of the car. Looks like standard ass covering to me.

[GCP]

10. Sounds very similar to a case in Massachusetts last year on I 495

http://wbztv.com/local/route.495.crash.2.633211.html

The woman was carrying her niece and nephew, crossed the median and drove into oncoming traffic. It was deemed suicide.