Taconic car crash

[Jeanette X]

Meet Diane Schuler:
http://news.google.com/news?um=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=%22Diane+schuler%22

A suburban mother in her mid-thirties, with no previous signs of mental illness, alcohol, or drug abuse, according to her friends and neighbors. An excellent mother, according to them. Never let her kids out of her sight. Quite vigilant in guarding their safety.

Diane Schuler left a campground one afternoon with five kids to drive home. Three nieces and her own two children. Everyone who saw her said she appeared perfectly normal. Nothing amiss.

Subsequently, according to what they can piece together, given the toxicology reports, Diane Schuler not only slugged down the equivalent of ten shots of hard liquor, she also smoked quite a bit of pot.

She drives along. She pulls over. She calls her brother. She tells him that she isn't feeling well. Isn't feeling well. Not, "I'm too blasted to drive." Not, "I'm fucking blind staggering drunk." No. "I'm not feeling well."

He says for her to remain where she is and he will come get her.

Instead of doing this, Diane Schuler tosses her phone aside, gets BACK in the car, and heads the wrong way down the highway, where she promptly slams into an SUV and kills herself, the passengers of the SUV, and all but one of the kids in her car. A total of eight fatalities.

Postmortem shows her to be perfectly healthy, aside from pot and alcohol.

Now boys and girls, what I am I missing here? What's wrong with this picture? What are the missing pieces of the puzzle?

To put it bluntly, what the fuck?

Anyone care to speculate?

[Chojin]

i blame videogames.

[Dimnos]

New boyfriend?

[Tadao]

I AM OUTRAGED!

[The Leader]

Natural selection.

[stevetothepast]

communism

[executioneer]

sudden-onset psychosis

[Jeanette X]

Maybe when her son comes out of the hospital he'll be able to shed some light on it...assuming he isn't brain damaged. :\

[elx]

yeah, all of the kids should have been old enough to understand that something was going wrong, they must've been really scared:(

[Colonel Flagg]

Maybe when her son comes out of the hospital he'll be able to shed some light on it...assuming he isn't brain damaged. :\

I wonder how her brother is handling things - the one she called from the parkway. I don't remember if it was mentioned, but if 3 of the kids were her nieces/nephews, then was he their father? If it were me, I'd be damned near suicidal.

This story has so many levels of sadness, it has "movie of the week" written all over it. :(

[Jeanette X]

I wonder how her brother is handling things - the one she called from the parkway. I don't remember if it was mentioned, but if 3 of the kids were her nieces/nephews, then was he their father? If it were me, I'd be damned near suicidal.

Yeah, he was the father. To his credit, he called the police as soon as he got off the phone with her.

Her husband is disputing the autopsy results and insisting that she must've had something medically wrong with her. I smell denial.

I think it might have been a suicide mission. One of the eyewitnesses (a man in another car who narrowly avoided being hit by her) said that she appeared to be control of the car and not swerving or anything, and she was even following the curve of the road. The New York Post reports that she was a regular at a bar and talked about having marital problems and a stressful job while she was there.

This story has so many levels of sadness, it has "movie of the week" written all over it. :(
Yeah. One of the responders on the scene was at the World Trade Center on 9/11 and said that this was worse.

[Zhukov]

Maybe someone fed her the alcohol/pot without her knowing it.

Sad story.

[Evil Robot]

I drive past that spot everyday on my way to work, there's burn marks all over the grass and chunks of pavement missing. The scary part is I had left work early but I had taken the train that day instead of driving. I would have been within a 15 minute window of being on the northbound side the same time as her.

[Jeanette X]

I drive past that spot everyday on my way to work, there's burn marks all over the grass and chunks of pavement missing. The scary part is I had left work early but I had taken the train that day instead of driving. I would have been within a 15 minute window of being on the northbound side the same time as her.

Jesus. You sure can thank your lucky stars.

[Dimnos]

Maybe someone fed her the alcohol/pot without her knowing it.

Sad story.


Like someone slipped her a micky! :hypno

[Jeanette X]

Maybe someone fed her the alcohol/pot without her knowing it.

Diane Schuler was 5'2 and she wasn't fat. With ten shots of hard liquor in her system, she should not have been able to stand up, let alone drive a car in ANY capacity. The booze should have killed her through alcohol poisoning. Therefore, she must've had an extremely high tolerance...the kind of tolerance that only very heavy drinkers develop. She must've been a closet alcoholic.

[The Leader]

Elementary, my dear Watson.

[executioneer]

ten ounces is not the same as ten shots

[Dimnos]

Schuler's blood-alcohol level was 0.19% — more than twice the legal limit, cops said. She had 6 grams of undigested alcohol in her stomach when she died.



Her husband, Daniel Schuler, told cops that his wife was fine when they left about 9:30 a.m. He drove one car straight home to West Babylon, L.I., while she took the kids to McDonald's.

Ann Scott, 77, who owns the campsite the family visited for three years, saw Schuler off.
"I got pretty close to her and waved goodbye,”" she said. "If she had alcohol in her breath, I would have smelled it."



So it must have been while driving?

[Jeanette X]

ten ounces is not the same as ten shots

They said it was the equivalent of ten shots.

[Evil Robot]

I went and looked at the exit she got on from today, the fucked up thing is that the way the intersection is set up, it feels like your supposed to go that way. If it weren't for the four or so huge signs and cars coming at you, I could see how any confused person could make that mistake.

[Zhukov]

Diane Schuler was 5'2 and she wasn't fat. With ten shots of hard liquor in her system, she should not have been able to stand up, let alone drive a car in ANY capacity. The booze should have killed her through alcohol poisoning. Therefore, she must've had an extremely high tolerance...the kind of tolerance that only very heavy drinkers develop. She must've been a closet alcoholic.

Maybe it was put in her drink bottle and she drank it all just before getting in the car, or during the trip.

[Jeanette X]

So it must have been while driving?
Presumably, yes.

Maybe it was put in her drink bottle and she drank it all just before getting in the car, or during the trip.

There was a broken bottle of vodka at the wreck...:\ Besides, even if that were the case, she should've passed out behind the wheel very quickly, she shouldn't have been able to drive at all, even if it was the wrong way.

[Tadao]

I think it is exactly what it looks like. She had been hiding her troubles and addictions from her family, no one knew she was in trouble so no one tried to help her, she finally got numb enough to die.

[Jeanette X]

I think it is exactly what it looks like. She had been hiding her troubles and addictions from her family, no one knew she was in trouble so no one tried to help her, she finally got numb enough to die.

I agree. Her husband worked long hours and didn't get to see her very often, so I think that he really might not have known.

Anyway, her son is doing well...he might be able to shed some light on this.
I went and looked at the exit she got on from today, the fucked up thing is that the way the intersection is set up, it feels like your supposed to go that way. If it weren't for the four or so huge signs and cars coming at you, I could see how any confused person could make that mistake.
Workers just added two "wrong way" signs to it.

[Tadao]

It's not that hard to hide it, what is hard is getting people to see that you are a time bomb without them telling you to man up. Thanks Dr. Phil!

[Jeanette X]

It's not that hard to hide it, what is hard is getting people to see that you are a time bomb without them telling you to man up. Thanks Dr. Phil!

Precisely. I doubt this would've happened if addiction wasn't so stigmatized...:\

[Tadao]

Some disagree with me, but I still say "Treat the person, not the addiction."

[Fathom Zero]

I went and looked at the exit she got on from today, the fucked up thing is that the way the intersection is set up, it feels like your supposed to go that way. If it weren't for the four or so huge signs and cars coming at you, I could see how any confused person could make that mistake.

:lol

[Colonel Flagg]

Some disagree with me, but I still say "Treat the person, not the addiction."

Unfortunately this family will never get the chance to find out "what if?" ....