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Tragic DUI Case - Teenagers and DUI

James Patterson Rolled His Dad's Suburban and Four of His Friends Died. His Blood Alcohol Level Showed He Was Drunk. More Than a Year Later, Everyone Touched by the Accident Is Still Struggling to Answer the Question. WHY?

Sunday, July 28, 1996
Home Edition
Section: Los Angeles Times Magazine
Page: 10

By: J.R. Moehringer

J.R. Moehringer is a Times staff writer in Orange County

He dreams that they are driving again, all eight boys cruising along the unpaved back roads of his mind. He begs them to pull over and let him out, he should get home, but they tell him to shut up and relax, everything will be fine. Reluctant, he sits back and lets himself be chauffeured across the stark landscape of his subconscious, past low-flying clouds of blame and guilt. He lets himself be ferried through the long night, until morning comes and the alarm goes off. Time to go to school. Time to face what happened.

It was 6:20 a.m., July 29, 1995. Starting home from an overnight camping trip with seven friends, he lost control of his father's 1987 Chevrolet Suburban and sent it tumbling across a barren stretch of the Mojave Desert north of Victorville. Like a Ferris wheel set free of its mooring, the 5,000-pound truck rolled across the desert floor, and with each revolution a friend vanished, a family shattered, a future dissolved.

When everything came to a shuddering stop, he opened his eyes and saw Jono, beautiful Jono, a swimmer with out-to-here shoulders and bottomless brown eyes that made all the girls weak, and he knew right away that Jono was dead. He turned to look in the backseat at John, a snowboarder with a taste for adventure, and he knew at once that John was dead, too. He looked out the window and saw the others, scattered in the wake of the truck. Steven, Drake, Pig, Joe, Tony. He jumped out the window and ran to each one, begging them to be alive.

Encrusted with bits of windshield and chrome, the desert glittered in the morning sun like a diamond field. Nearby campers and dirt bikers, thinking a plane must have crashed nose first, came running toward the swirling plumes of smoke and found him sitting in the glassy dust, stroking the hand of Pig, his best friend since grade school. "It's my fault," he told them, sobbing. "I killed my friends!"

California Highway Patrol officers quickly agreed. His breath reeked of beer, and a blood test showed that he was legally drunk. Had he been an adult, James Virgil Patterson probably would be in prison right now, perhaps for years to come. But because he was an honor student at Anaheim's Katella High School, because he was an Eagle Scout, because he was two months shy of his 18th birthday, the law regarded him as an errant youth. Though he admitted to killing four boys--Steven "Pig" Bender, 18, Jonothan Croweagle Fabbro, 16, Tony Fuentes Jr., 17, and John Thornton, 18--and seriously injuring three others, the law exempted him from adult punishment.

Now, on a drizzly March morning eight months after the crash, he sits in San Bernardino County Juvenile Court, awaiting his sentence. For weeks, he and the parents of his dead friends have understood that he will plead guilty to four counts of vehicular manslaughter and two counts of felony drunk driving, then receive 120 days in jail and 120 days of alcohol rehabilitation. (As a gesture to the parents, the court also will bar him from taking part in graduation ceremonies at Katella, where he ranks near the top of his 316-member class.)

"Awful as this was," says Colin Bilash, a deputy district attorney of San Bernardino, "he didn't set out to kill these kids. There's no chance we would be able to try him under these circumstances as an adult. Our hands are tied."

So the real punishment this morning will be meted out by the dead boys' parents, who have waited months for one clean shot at James. Officially, each parent will be asked to present a "victim-impact statement," something judges have used in recent years to let injured parties directly address the courts. But none of the parents assembled this morning intends to address Court Referee Joseph M. Petrasek. They intend to address James. He is the sole reason they rose at dawn and made the long journey from Anaheim to this dreary brown building behind a mental hospital on the outskirts of San Bernardino. Before James receives what they consider a slap on the wrist, they want to tell him about the ruin he's caused.

They are difficult to watch: four sets of heartbroken parents who move in slow motion, speak in fragments, obsess about blame. Until blame has been fully counted in this case, they can't rest--though some understand that such a reckoning may never come, an idea that makes them walk the floor at night. Sometimes they blame fate, or God, or Budweiser. Occasionally they blame themselves for letting their sons go unsupervised to the desert, for looking the other way when their sons drank beer, for the chain of parental decisions that led to one impossibly tragic crash. But such self-doubts only strengthen their resolve to blame James.

Squeezed among the parents are grief-sick aunts and grandmothers, cousins and brothers, sisters and sisters-in-law, a group of roughly 20, all glaring at James, all eager to lend their voices to the chorus of denouncement. In contrast to James, who sits alone at a table in the front of the courtroom, the anti-James forces occupy both rows of benches, like an entire side of chess pieces arrayed against an opponent's unguarded king.

Hangdog, James shuffles his Hush Puppies and takes care to avoid eye contact. More than 6 feet tall, with strong arms and a swimmer's shoulders, he wears an expression that fluctuates between insolence and innocence. His reddish-blond hair grudgingly obeys a part in the middle of his head, but the bangs tend to fall forward into his acne-specked face. Frequently, he brushes the bangs away with long, trembling fingers; his other nervous habit is to blink hard, once or twice, as though momentarily blinded.

Carved into the back of his right leg is a forest green tattoo, "PJTJ," which combines the first letters of his dead friends' names in an honorific logo. Several days after the crash, James and three other boys walked into Good Time Charlie's Tattooland in Anaheim and told the tattoo artist, Paul Stottler, about a crash they had just survived. Four friends died, they said, and they wanted the names of those friends emblazoned on their bodies. "Every once in a while, [James] would be looking off, spacing out," Stottler says. "You could tell the crash scarred him, big time."

Behind James this morning sit his parents, grimacing at what lies ahead. Like their son, David and Elizabeth Patterson have maintained a perfect silence about the crash these last eight months, except to offer sympathy to the other parents--some of whom were once friends--and to say that James has been unfairly maligned by blame-happy lawyers and reporters. Elizabeth, a reed-thin clerk for the Orange County Marshal's Department, wears tweedy skirts and never takes her eyes off James. David, a white-haired ex-Marine and Vietnam veteran who now decorates trade shows for a living, wears thick glasses and purses his lips like a man on the verge of telling someone off. (Before the crash, James dreamed of following in his father's footsteps, but plans to attend the Naval Academy seem unrealistic now.) Seated with the Pattersons, looking petrified, are James' younger sister, 16-year-old Vianne, and brother, 14-year-old Sam.

Low-ceilinged and oppressively small, the courtroom can barely accomodate everyone present, with many forced to sit sideways or shoulder-to-shoulder. But no one dreams of waiting outside, other than the handful of flannel-clad kids who make up James's entourage. They seem more than happy to pass the morning in the parking lot.

James' friends normally form a protective shield around their leader. They attend him at court, stay with him during his house arrest, clash with anyone who dares criticize him publicly. Like James, most are seniors at Katella, where they led a successful write-in movement shortly after the crash to nominate James for homecoming king. (At the principal's suggestion, James declined the nomination.) Most have scrutinized the 78-page police report, and they don't believe a word of it. The report concludes, for instance, that James was drunk because his blood-alcohol level exceeded .16%, more than twice the legal limit for adults. But many kids think the beer in James' blood was neutralized by the five hours of sleep he got before driving.

James knew he was the designated driver for the ride home, the kids say. So while the other boys stayed awake and drank around the campfire, James did the responsible thing and crawled into his sleeping bag. Many offer this as irrefutable proof that James was sober.

"It's a freak accident," spits 18-year-old Drake Gustafson, one of the four crash survivors, who suffered a fractured skull and severe facial bruises and continues to cope with one lingering aftereffect: He can no longer taste or smell. Truth be told, Drake says, whatever beer remained in James' body may have saved some lives. "What if James was sober?" he asks. "He'd probably think he could handle the Suburban. He'd be going faster, we'd probably have rolled 12 times, and everyone would've been killed."

A curly-headed boy named Mike Gordon, a friend of James since kindergarten, says James was well known as a loudmouth who liked to lecture others on the evils of drinking and driving. Many kids tell stories about James cornering them at keg parties and seizing their car keys. Several think they owe their lives, or at least their driver's licenses, to James. "Out of all of us, he's the most responsible," says Jeff Phan, who shocked James after the crash by issuing this warning: If you give up and kill yourself, I will, too.

"The parents should blame themselves for at least half," Mike continues. Most of these parents knew their sons were drinkers, he claims, and they knew the camping trip would include beer. Some even tolerated teenage drinking parties in their homes. After consenting to so much illicit drinking, how can they blame the results on James?

Even before the homecoming controversy, some kids devastated the grieving parents by leaving gift-wrapped beers at the graves and posting a wooden sign at the crash site: "Brews Forever." But Mike scoffs. The beers were left by some misguided souls, he says. And brews? That was just a nickname James and some of the other kids gave themselves years ago--a reference not to beer but to a song, "We're the Brews," by the punk band NOFX.

"Someone asked me if I learned a lesson from this accident," says Drake, drawing the words out slowly, knowing how many parents want to hear his answer. "And I honestly said, 'I didn't learn anything from it. It's an accident.' "

One teenager not content to wait outside the courthouse is Steven Cass, a stocky boy whose military crew cut clashes sharply with his baby face. Though the crash sent Steven to the hospital for days with a fractured left clavicle and rib cage, and though he retains nasty scars up and down his back, Steven means to speak this morning on James' behalf. (The fourth survivor, Joe Fraser, who suffered a broken left arm and a severe concussion, has never spoken publicly about the crash.) "If James was drunk, then we all were drunk," Steven says, "because we didn't realize that James was too drunk to drive."

Indeed, Steven and the boys were very drunk at the time of the crash. Before leaving Anaheim for the desert, they bought dozens of beers at Me-N-Paul's, an Anaheim liquor store allegedly favored by many local kids. A jury recently acquitted the store clerk of criminal charges and deadlocked on charges against the owner, perhaps because every beer James drank before the crash came from his parents.

Five days after the crash, CHP officers confronted the Pattersons about letting their 17-year-old son take a 12-pack of Henry Weinhard's Private Reserve from the kitchen refrigerator. "Why didn't you stop him?" the officers asked.

James' father sighed and said nothing.

"Believe me," Elizabeth Patterson said, "we've asked that." Pressing into the courtroom now are several solemn members of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, led by Reidel Post, whose file cabinets are full of statistics about alcohol and death, such as drunk driving kills more than 2,000 Americans between 16 and 20 each year. Reidel spends her days crusading against drunk drivers (she was disfigured by a drunk driver eight years ago), but she can't recall many drunk drivers like James. Hours after the crash, Reidel began lobbying for James' victims, representing them in meetings with the district attorney's office, listening to their anguish. She had no choice but to immerse herself in this case, she says. She still hears that first tearful phone call from Tony Fuentes' father, begging for help. "I have never in my whole life heard a man sound so sad," she says. "I will never as long as I live forget the sound of his voice." David and Elizabeth Patterson scowl at Reidel, convinced she wants their son to suffer, and they are right. Reidel wants an example made of James. "I'm the parent of two teenage kids," she says. "If one of my children chooses to drink and drive, they have to pay the consequences. And the truth is, I might want to look at it as an accident. But it's a choice."

A few feet from Reidel sits Steven Cass' mother, Joanne Marsh, who wears tinted glasses through which she shoots bright looks of encouragement at James. Like most of the parents whose boys survived the crash, Joanne counts herself among James' most ardent backers. She thinks these people glowering at the top of James' bowed head are no better than a lynch mob. "If they had monitored their own kids as closely as they're now monitoring James," she says, "maybe they could have prevented this tragedy from happening."

At first she also wanted James to hang from the highest tree. Walking into his room at Victor Valley Community Hospital just after the crash, she thought she was stepping into a brewery. "He reeked of alcohol," she remembers. "And I said, 'You lied to me! You said you'd never, ever, drink and drive!' And he says, 'I didn't! I swear! I was not drunk! I am not drunk!' I said, 'But you smell like alcohol!' " Clinging to her, crying, James swore that when the truck somersaulted across the desert, a cooler full of unopened beer cans exploded and sprayed him. "I felt better," she says. "I knew that's why he stunk. When the crash happened, the beer got on him."

First to speak is Jono's mother, Laura Stewart. unsteadily she walks to the lectern, which stands just inches from James, her blond hair lapping against the leather arms of Jono's letter jacket. Laura wears this jacket whenever she visits Pacific View Memorial Park in Newport Beach, where Jono lies beside Pig and John on a gently sloping hill above the ocean. (Tony is buried in La Mirada, near his father's house.)

Most of Laura's visits to Pacific View are accompanied by Jimi Hendrix, who hovers in the moist air, rattling the wind chimes. Jono adored Hendrix, so Laura gives him a Hendrix concert every weekend. Setting her portable stereo atop Jono's headstone, she cranks the volume as loud as it will go and grins at every vibrant guitar lick. With the music blaring, she sets about performing simple chores, like decorating Jono's grave with seashells or polishing the gray marble headstone until it glows like the screen of a TV set that's just been switched off.

Laura went through 30 hours of labor with Jono, "really hard labor." After several abortions and miscarriages and a diagnosis of hemophilia, doctors doubted she would ever be a mother. But Jono changed all that. From the moment of conception, nothing could stop Jono. Nothing but James. She turns to face James. "Accountable," she tells him, pausing to give the word weight.

Like several parents in the room, Laura coached her son to drink responsibly instead of forbidding him to drink at all. She gave at least one party at which Jono and other teenagers drank. But there was a designated driver, she insists, and James shouldn't use a few adult-supervised parties to avoid responsibility.

"The loss of Jonothan caused a wake-up into a reality that is hopeless and dark," she tells James. "The past is a beautiful, carefree dream that I'll never have again. If I didn't have two young children, I would have no problem, or hesitation, ending this nightmare I now call my life."

Laura's ex-husband decided not to come this morning, though Laura urged him to attend. Laura hoped Fred Curtis could persuade the court to stiffen James' sentence, but Fred told her the fix is in. Let the other parents flail away at James, Fred will stay in his Fountain Valley jewelry-making studio, hammering his antique anvil. He still has a $7,000 mortuary bill to pay, he says.

Fred can't always concentrate on his work, but when he can he often wears above his heart a giant button made from Jono's picture. The button is so large, the father-son likeness so striking, that Fred seems to have two faces: One young and shockingly handsome, the other creased by grief.

For much of his 38 years, Fred has been three things. Father, jeweler, Apache. With Jono's death, the lovely trinity of a life has been disrupted. Lost without his son, unable to work with any consistency, Fred devotes himself full time to American Indian grieving rituals. Every weekend he attends powwows and ceremonial dances, beating a poplar drum and crying out to the spirit of his dead son. Every few days he visits Pacific View, serenading Jono's grave with music from one of his sacred flutes. Sometimes Fred plays a red cedar flute for which he traded a few pieces of jewelry. Often he plays a smaller flute with burn marks along the mouthpiece, a delicate instrument given to him by a spiritual elder who said it mysteriously survived a raging house fire. When Fred can't even find the strength to beat his drum or play his flute, he simply floats on Jono's surfboard or lies on Jono's bed, breathing in the boy's smell.

Though he doesn't drink much these days, Fred remembers being 17, vomiting on the side of a road, sleeping it off in a car before driving home. That was 20 years ago, however. With greater public awareness of drinking and driving, Fred thinks James should have known better. "If James would've had a better education about alcohol, none of this would have happened."

Endlessly, Fred mulls over this scene: Jono asks if he may go to the desert, saying nothing about beer. Fred deliberates, then says OK. What else can a father tell a trusted son? Particularly a father who went light on the discipline, believing the wellsprings of youth are the wellsprings of life itself. "I'll have to live with that decision for the rest of my life," Fred murmurs.

No one knows how much Jono drank that night. Fred might have asked the police to perform a blood test on his son, who died instantly from blunt head trauma. "But I figured dead is dead," Fred says, "what's the difference?" More relevant is how much James drank, how much James should suffer. "It's a shame," Fred says. "You kill four people, then you walk away."

Having said this, however, Fred frowns. He knows that Jono and James were dear friends, and he wonders how he can hate a boy his son loved. "If I hate James Patterson, my life becomes very complicated," he says. Fred tortures himself with this dilemma, because he wants more than justice. He wants to do right by Jono.

"When I threw the first shovelful of dirt on his coffin," Fred says, "a feeling came over me--I held up my end of the bargain. He always came first. I was always there for him 100%. I did a good job." With a catch in his throat, Fred looks down at his heart, where a mirror image smiles back in perpetual agreement.

Unlike her ex-husband, Laura indulges her hatred, even embraces it. Watching James and his friends outside the courthouse shortly before one of the many hearings on his fate, she says, "He should get the chair." Such violent fantasies make her the emotional ally of Tony Fuentes Sr., who now stalks toward the podium like a wounded prizefighter in the late rounds, his niece by his side.

Most mornings Tony Sr. sits in his living room, staring at his homemade shrine: Two dozen portraits of Tony Jr., from baby pictures to yearbook photos; two photographs of twisted tires and sheared metal strewn around the crash site; a photocopy of Tony Jr.'s headstone, with the inscription "Safe In the Arms of Jesus"; two votive candles adorned with images of Our Lady of Guadalupe; two vases of red and white carnations; one faded birth certificate from the State of California, issued in the name of Jose Antonio Fuentes Jr. Like three of the four dead boys, Tony Jr. was his father's only son. Sometimes a woman friend drops by and prays with Tony Sr., but this only helps a little. Sometimes his niece drops by to check on him, but she can't seem to cheer him up, and lately she worries that he may be slipping away. When not staring at his shrine, Tony Sr. sits outside in his car, motor off, gazing dully ahead.

A meat-cutter for 15 years at a Vons supermarket, Tony Sr. earns roughly $800 every two weeks. For years it was his habit to work 52 weeks straight, without a break, then cash his two-week vacation pay and put it toward something special for Tony Jr. Last year it was a 1963 Ford Falcon. This year it's a headstone.

Tony Sr. doesn't trust himself around James. "I got a lot of anger," he warns visitors. "I got a lot of anger." With his son gone, Tony Sr. has no one. His wife left him several years ago. Now his daughter, Geo, wants no part of him because he publicly condemns James. Geo loved her brother, but she also loves James, her former schoolmate and one of her best friends.

This is not how Tony Sr. expected life to look at 47 years old: Separated from his wife, mourning his only son, estranged from his only daughter, poisoned with hatred for a boy he's never met. If only his family had stayed together, he says. "If she'd left the kids with me, he'd still be alive."

Too overcome to speak this morning, Tony Sr. lets his niece speak for him. She reads the carefully typed statement he prepared, beginning with his description of racing to San Bernardino County Medical Center. Mashing the accelerator, he begged God to let Tony Jr. live. But soon he found himself beside his son's irreparably broken body.

"I never expected to see my son lying in a coma," she reads, "bleeding from his head, not able to respond to the sound of my voice, lifeless . . . All the wonderful memories of his life were going through my mind. I prayed and asked God to please let Tony and me walk out of the hospital together. Unfortunately, the worst moment in my entire life was when the doctor arrived and said he was going to pull the life support to see if Tony was able to survive without it. Then the doctor said, 'Sorry, Mr. Fuentes, your son is dead.' "

Crying, leaning against her uncle, the niece continues to read:

"I wanted to die right there with him. My heart just broke in pieces. My only son had been taken from me . . . . Now I have no one left. Not only was my son taken from me, but it has destroyed my relationship I had with my daughter. I have nightmares of my son trying to tell me something. I hear his voice telling me not to let him die."

Tears streaming down his face, Tony Sr. hugs his niece and watches James. He seems to be daring James to look up from his lap, but James never does. Shortly after the crash, James got a call from his lawyer, warning that Tony Sr. had threatened revenge. Home alone at the time, James spent the rest of the afternoon cowering in the back of the house, jumping at every sound.

When the niece reaches the end of Tony Sr.'s statement, she helps him back to his seat, and Geo Fuentes stalks forward.

"My brother was not killed by anyone!" she declares. "He died in a car accident!"

Hearing someone speak in his defense, James now pitches forward, his body convulsing with sobs. While his mother stretches tissues toward his hands, Geo praises James' honesty and integrity. Yes, Tony Jr. was her brother and best friend, she says. But James is her friend, too, and he's hurting. She pauses, tears springing to her eyes, and Tony Sr. bounds toward her, a distance of two steps in the tiny courtroom. He places a hand on Geo's shoulder, but she spins and shoves him away. "Go sit down!" she barks. "Don't stand beside me!"

*

Only two hours have passed, but everyone appears limp with exhaustion by the time Steven "Pig" Bender's mother approaches the lectern.

For Cindy Bender, grief has been a tortuous ride. Just after the crash, she threatened a wrongful death lawsuit against the Pattersons. Then she dropped it. In the fall, she declared that James must pay for what he did. Then she begged the district attorney to be lenient with him. Periodically Cindy meets with lawmakers or talk show hosts, lobbying for tougher laws regarding teenagers and liquor. But this morning she has only forgiveness on her mind.

Cindy likes to say that Steven would have been the best man at James' wedding one day, a claim no one disputes. When the Benders moved from Arizona to Anaheim in 1989, Steven was the fattest, clumsiest member of the seventh grade. He was the playground laughingstock, with round eyeglasses and no friends. Then James rode to the rescue, took charge, ran interference-- and when someone observed that Steven looked like Piggy, the overweight crybaby in "Lord of the Flies," James guffawed and declared that a nickname had been born.

Pig hated the name at first, but James taught him to develop a self-deprecating sense of humor. James coached Pig through Boy Scouts, prodded him to attend Katella, counseled him through hard times. Once, in a quiet moment, Pig confided to James that their friendship had saved his life. If not for James, Pig told him, suicide would have been the only answer.

Under James' tutelage, Pig was reborn, a sort of teenage Pygmalion. Along with his nickname, he grew into his body (6-foot-6, 230 pounds) and his new personality. He transformed himself into the wild-haired life of the party. Loud-dressing, chain-smoking, pot-loving, beer-swilling, he didn't care if people laughed at him or with him, as long as they laughed.

They never laughed harder than at his viewing. As Pig lay in his casket, the many traumas that caused his death concealed by a mortician's makeup, roughly 20 kids gathered round, James at the center. The mood was somber, grim. Then a beautiful girl said under her breath, "Pig, you better not be watching me in the shower," and the mood changed. Suddenly they were laughing at Pig again, teasing him about the folly of donating his organs. Pity the poor slob who gets those dingy lungs, they said. Or, God forbid, that beer-soaked liver! Raucous laughter filled the funeral parlor, and every giggle was like a gift for Pig. How fitting that Pig should be named for a character in "Lord of the Flies." The novel about boys creating their own world on a deserted island was the ideal parable for Pig, James and their inner circle. Though all lived on the narrow margins of Orange County's middle class, they were not a homogenous group. Some came from broken homes, others from stable families. Some were excellent students, others were failing. Some were college-bound, others were hell-bent on military careers. Some were talented athletes, others were layabouts. What united them was a ferocious love of Pearl Jam, a fondness for beer and a powerful disenchantment with the adult world, which compelled them to form their own tribe and make James Patterson the paterfamilias.

One of the group's proudest moments was vandalizing Katella High School. (Six of the eight boys involved in the crash were among the participants.) Sneaking onto campus one night, they scattered garbage, hoisted a mock flag and crowned the school roof with an old Volkswagen chassis, a prank school officials seemed to accept with wry amusement. Another time they flew down the Costa Mesa Freeway in Pig's beefed-up 1973 Mustang convertible, the speedometer quivering around 140 miles an hour and flames spewing from the tailpipe, a stunt typical of Pig, who once got airborne in his car and landed in the drive-through lane of a fast-food restaurant.

By sifting through his yearbook, Cindy Bender learned only recently about the central role her son played in the lives of his friends. The pictures made her smile, but the inscriptions made her blood run cold, each one a paean to beer and drugs.

"I have watched you grow up from a chubby little boy who was lost from the start into a tall drunk that is still lost," James scribbled in the back of the book. "Good luck in whatever the hell you plan on doing in life. I hope one day we can drink beers together as old men. Don't get too sober this summer. Remember--sober sucks."

With her husband looking on, Cindy speaks only briefly this morning, telling the court that Pig and the others knew what they were doing when they went to the desert, so James should be spared severe punishment. "James will never slip again," she promises, adding: "I'll always welcome James into our family. [Pig] only wanted justice, not revenge."

Returning to her seat, she draws irate stares from several parents when she stoops to kiss James on the cheek.

Moments later, John Thornton's mother steps forward and brings the morning to its emotional climax. Unlike her husband, William, who uses his statement to read a consolatory letter from Barbara Walters, Christine Thorton keeps her statement intensely personal. A sad-faced woman with close-cropped auburn hair and royal blue eyes, she begins by describing everyday sorrows, such as feeling her heart sink whenever she sees a slice of leftover pizza after supper. There was no such thing as leftover pizza, she explains, when John was alive.

"There are constant reminders that we have been robbed of his life," she says in a high-pitched monotone. "The life that would take care of his large aquarium, or train his new puppy, Bailey, or do the chores around the house."

John was a mischief-maker, Christine concedes, though she doesn't mention that weeks before the crash she found a cache of marijuana plants growing in his bedroom closet. She believes John turned the corner just before his death, that he was on the verge of putting his life together, maybe becoming a minister.

After dropping out of Katella, John was earning his high school degree through a program at Rancho Santiago College in Orange. But schoolwork always came second to his many hobbies, which included snowboarding, fishing, mountain biking, collecting remote control cars, keeping tropical fish and attending monster truck races. He was a feather-light soul who painted his bedroom green and pressed beer caps into the ceiling to improve its acoustics.

Weeks after John's death, the Thorntons remembered a chocolate Labrador retriever puppy he'd picked out for his 19th birthday. In their grief, they'd forgotten all about the dog; now they were inclined to forget about it again. But at the urging of their children, they decided to adopt the dog, even though its presence provides a daily reminder that John will never return. Each day they watch the pup romp through the house, its frantic energy a counterpoint to their gloom.

John and James were not close friends, Christine tells the court. John considered James a drunk and a bully with a quick temper. She wonders aloud if James was mad about something in the moments before the crash, maybe driving crazily to make a point with the other boys?

"The pain is so great," she tells James, who hangs his head lower. "The loss of John has broken my heart--there are pieces missing that will never be replaced." Since John's death, Christine's health has slipped away. Driving down the freeway one afternoon, months after the crash, she suffered an attack of stress-related blindness that forced her off the road and sent her to a battery of doctors.

Turning now to the Pattersons, Christine accuses them of being cavalier about the crash, of ducking responsibility. Then, in motherly tones, she urges James to break free of his family's influence, to quit drinking before it's too late. Knowing teenagers, understanding their ability to tune out adult anger, Christine leans into James and speaks with crisp precision: "You have a choice to make. The justice system will give you a new start."

And for this uncommon show of mercy, she adds, the justice system should be ashamed. She looks over the lawyers as though surveying a sink full of dirty dishes. "Everyone's got their job to do," she tells them, dejectedly. "It's a fruitless question--but who is to blame?"

Finally she produces a large, gruesome photo of John in his hospital bed. Plainly visible are the "multiple blunt force injuries" that the coroner cited as the cause of death. Eyes closed, face void of any life, he is difficult to recognize, which is Christine's point. Holding the picture aloft, she demands that James raise his head. Slowly he obeys.

"I don't know who this is," she says. "Do you recognize him?"

He shakes his head slightly, then turns away.

At the end of the day, after more than four hours, Court Referee Petrasek asks Deputy Dist. Atty. Bilash if he has anything to add. Bilash, who spent months helping the parents prepare for everything happening today, now seems unprepared himself.

"In my personal opinion," Bilash says in a rapid-fire cadence, "we should be sitting here discussing how long Mr. Patterson goes to state prison. It's not even a close call. This offense just fell through the cracks, and that really, really bothers me." He glances at the parents, who gaze at him with astonished expressions. He glances at the Pattersons, whose frowns grow deeper. He glares at James, who hangs his head still lower. "All I can say to the families is, 'I'm sorry we couldn't do more.' "

According to the most recent probation report, Bilash says, James harbors no remorse. Repeatedly, James regales the probation department with stories about "what everyone else did," while sloughing off responsibility for his own deeds.

"When he talks about his use of alcohol," Bilash says, raising his voice, "I do not get any sense that he thinks he's got a problem. And that's what frustrates me more than anything else. Because he's going to get out, and he's going to be back on the streets again."

Bilash flips through the pages of the probation report, shaking his head. "He does not feel that his consuming alcohol had anything to do with the accident! That is such a ludicrous statement that I'm embarrassed to read it!"

Despite feeling disgusted by James and his nonchalance, Bilash says he will not revoke the plea agreement. He thunders for several minutes more, then falls strangely silent. When James declines his right to speak, Petrasek approves the deal that will send James to jail for 120 days, beginning June 13, the day after his final exam. On his way to the parking lot, James does an odd thing. He shakes Bilash's hand.

He rolls his own cigarette, sprinkling tobacco meticulously along the paper and sealing it with his tongue. "Nobody can even imagine the amount of stress," he says in a permanently adolescent warble, a voice forever on the verge of changing. "Everything that's happened, it kind of calms you down, I guess, when you have a smoke."

He goes to jail soon, but he tries not to think about that. In fact, his mind is an obstacle course, filled with things he'd rather not think about, though the crash doesn't seem to be among them. Drinking coffee one night at a Denny's not far from his school, he reconstructs the day everything changed.

It started with a group of boys hoping to get out of town, yearning to let off some steam before summer ended and senior year began. The list of who would go changed throughout the day as they weighed different plans. Finally Pig suggested the desert. That sounded good, so James borrowed his father's Suburban, plus a 12-pack of beer from the kitchen refrigerator, and before leaving Anaheim they stopped at Me-N-Paul's. They were regulars at Me-N-Paul's.

"I realize that we--myself included--had a problem with the drinking," he says. "We definitely did drink too much."

But buying the stuff was easy, and they often consumed it under adult supervision, so they never thought they were committing any grave sin. Besides, he was always careful not to drink and drive.

They reached the desert after dark. Someone built a fire, and he cracked open a beer. He drank at least 10 over the course of the night, sitting next to Jono and talking about the future. Pig and John were off in the shadows, making monkey noises and smoking marijuana. Tony was watching the sky, hoping to see a shooting star. Everyone was drinking, some were getting high. But James never used pot, he says, because he aspired to military and political careers. "I didn't want to be like Clinton and have to say I never inhaled."

Around 1 a.m., James said good night and made a bed for himself in the backseat. It seemed like only minutes later the boys were shaking the truck and telling him to wake up. Two of them needed to get back to Anaheim for a baseball game.

As dawn brought the desert into soft focus, he walked in circles, trying to clear his head, helping collect the empty beer cans. The boys, meanwhile, stood around the truck, bickering about who would sit where. None of them imagined that in a few moments seating arrangements would determine who survived. Then James climbed behind the wheel, fastened his seat belt and off they went. They were a quarter-mile down the bumpy dirt road when he felt the truck start to skid. The police say he was going 58 miles an hour, but he thinks that sounds fast. Whatever the speed, he hit a berm and lost control. "It wasn't scary at all," he says. "I remember thinking, Oh, s - - -, the truck's rolling, my parents are going to kill me. And then the truck stopped rolling and you're already in shock and you're just, like, shaking and everything. And I looked next to me and Jono is laying down on the bench seat and, like, he was just f - - - - - up. And I checked his pulse and I knew he was dead right away. And it didn't even register, I was just like, 'Goddamn, Jono's dead.' "

He jumped out the window and ran from boy to boy. Then he saw Pig, lying in the road and making all sorts of weird noises.

Pig. His best friend. It seemed unreal, sitting in court one day, hearing the referee ask: Is it true, according to Count Three, that a felony was committed by you, that you did unlawfully and without gross negligence kill Steven R. Bender, a human being?

"I feel so sorry for these parents," he says. "I imagine losing Pig is a lot like losing a kid, just because of how close we were."

He wants the Benders, Fabbros, Fuenteses and Thorntons to know that he bears a heavy weight of responsibility. His mind is so full that he often has trouble sleeping, drifting off for merely a few hours with the help of soft classical music on the radio. But he also believes all eight boys were culpable, and he thinks it possible that a defective tire caused the crash, although police found no evidence of a blowout. "We'll never know," he says.

Not long ago, while reading James Michener's "Hawaii," he came upon an unfamiliar word: Opprobrium. He checked the dictionary and found that it means "disgrace or infamy attached to conduct viewed as grossly shameful." Such an ugly word--he wondered with alarm if he was guilty of opprobrium. His English teacher, however, assured him that the word implies sustained conduct, not one mistake.

He was relieved.

He no longer drinks, vows never to drink again, but not necessarily because of the crash. "When you get drunk, you get a lot more emotional, and at this point in time I don't want to get emotional."

He credits his mother and father with standing by him.

Tags: DUI News |  Underage drinking

Can Teens Be Scared Into Driving Safely?

Thousands of driver-ed students will watch 'Red Asphalt V,' the latest in a long line of CHP horror films. But will it change behavior?
By Tony Bizjak -- Bee Staff Writer

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On a recent afternoon at the Department of Motor Vehicles' Broadway office, eager teens headed out one by one on their driving test with high hopes of earning their California license.

Next door at the Sacramento Country Coroner's Office, a tragic result of that new freedom was being dramatized. A grim-faced actor gestured to a row of bodies on gurneys in the cold storage room, their toes tagged for identification.

"They never thought they'd end up here," he said.

It was the filming of "Red Asphalt V," the latest sequel in California's legendary series of driver education horror films.

For 40 years, "Red Asphalt" movies have used graphic images of real highway crashes to warn teens they are but one mistake from being "Spam in a can," says Steve Kohler, who oversaw the California Highway Patrol-produced film.

The new movie, scheduled for release this month to driving educators in California and beyond, is expected to be viewed by tens of thousands of teenagers.

But one important question remains: Will those future drivers get the message?

California's "Red Asphalt" films are part of what sociologists call the popular "fear appeal" method of getting teens to behave. The genre includes the legendary "Reefer Madness," a 1930s movie in which addiction to marijuana lands a student in an insane asylum. Lately, the appeals have turned sophisticated, with public service commercials such as the recent anti-smoking spot in which a woman suffering from cancer of the larynx pauses to puff on a cigarette through a hole in her throat.

Fear appeal also is a key element in the state's "Every 15 Minutes" - a high school program whose title reflects the frequency of fatal car crashes. "Every 15 Minutes" begins with a "fatal" accident staged at the campus. The following day, schools hold a memorial service where parents read aloud letters to their "deceased" children.

Despite fear appeal's popularity, many academics say it doesn't work on most teens and could even cause some to be even less careful.

If there is too much gore, says Bruce Simons-Morton, who heads up prevention research at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the horror may drown out the message. Even those initially frightened, he added, may forget the message after a few weeks of uneventful driving.

Chayla Furlong, 19, of Auburn - who has both a car crash and speeding tickets in her driving history - says she paid no attention to the "Red Asphalt" film she saw in driver education class a few years ago.

"I remember it being more gory than it needed to be," said the college sophomore. "That was a little too much for me to handle. It made me tune out."

Kansas State University psychology professor Renee Slick, who is studying teen driver safety messages, complains that safety programs are flying blind. She recently tested teenagers, using sensor pads attached to the skin to gauge physical response - including heart rate, muscle tension and perspiration - and found that many boys have a strong physiological reaction when viewing videos of crumpled cars.

But that may mean they are physically excited rather than frightened, Slick warned. "We don't know, and that's scary. If sensation-seekers get a high off of this, then we are just fueling this fire."

From the beginning, the "Red Asphalt" movies were based more on philosophy than scientific research. CHP officials acknowledge they haven't tested what effect the movies have had on teen driving habits, though they say they hear from adults who remember the movie years later.

"To measure the effects, that is tough," said Kent Milton, who produced past versions of the films for the CHP. Milton cautioned that the movie should be just a part of a broader discussion of safe driving.

The new film, produced last spring by the CHP in conjunction with a film crew and a marketing research consultant, is funded by a $200,000 federal grant. The CHP hopes to recoup the extra cost of making copies of the film by charging $15 per copy.

CHP officials update the movie every few years to keep up with trends, including making sure the cars are up-to-date. Teens will ignore the movie if it looks old-fashioned, they say. This time they also opted to amp up the intensity after focus groups, teens and driver education teachers agreed that the 1998 version was too wimpy, especially for teens used to realistic special effects violence on television and in movies.

David Morton, who teaches driver education at Laguna Creek High School, stopped showing it to his classes because it didn't seem to capture teens' attention.

"I'm not a 'gore' guy, but I want them to see reality," Morton said.

The new movie has plenty of reality. It shows footage of twisted bodies thrown from cars and crushed inside smashed vehicles. There is a quick camera pan to a brain lying in gravel, and another shot of a severed forearm on the road.

Some researchers say there are recent indications that the fear appeal approach does work - at least on certain teens - if presented in the right context.

A limited study at California State University, Chico, suggests that the "Every 15 Minutes" program has a lingering effect six months later on the handful of students chosen to be "killed" in the simulated car crash.

Michigan State University researcher Kim Witte, who has studied the fear approach to health education, says teens reject the message if they feel manipulated. That has happened, she said, in preaching about the dangers of drugs, alcohol, smoking and unprotected sex.

But Witte believes the approach works if the gore isn't too off-putting and if the audience isn't left feeling powerless. The trick is to provide concrete and believable steps students can take to avoid ending up a road crash victim.

"You can scare the bejeebers out of them as long as they understand they can do something that effectively protects them," Witte said.

Of course, with teens there is a broader question of whether any cautionary education will change behavior. A federal brain wave study recently found that the brain's ability to recognize and put the brakes on risky behavior doesn't fully develop until a person is in his or her mid-20s.

In addition, the research on programs such as the anti-drug DARE program has shown that the scared-straight approach can quickly wear off. Researchers say they suspect the same is true of driver safety programs that seek to shock.

Many beginning teen drivers interviewed by The Bee said they could not picture themselves getting into a bad crash.

Eric Thomson, 16, a junior at Rocklin High School, saw a video of car crashes shown by the CHP at a new parent-teen night program called "start smart." When he and his father got to the parking lot afterward, Eric refused to take the truck keys. "You can drive," he told his dad, half-joking. "I don't ever want to drive again."

A week or so later, Eric - who considers himself a cautious driver - said he had stopped thinking about the video because "I don't think it could possibly happen to me."

The complicating factor for researchers is that teenagers' reactions to fear appeals vary widely.

David Schumann of the University of Tennessee conducted a study in 1992 that found that fear might work with safety-conscious teens who are not by nature what psychologists call "high sensation-seekers." But it could have the opposite effect on the teens who need it most: those with risk-taking personalities.

Schumann theorizes that sensation seekers see themselves as invulnerable or invincible, making them essentially immune to fear.

Then, there is the boomerang effect.

When speeding, drinking alcohol or smoking are presented as dangerous by adults, "that makes it all the more appealing to some young people who want to show they are brave or who want to flout authority," said David Hanson, a social psychologist at the State University of New York, Potsdam.

CHP officials agree they need to do more than scare. That is reflected in the new "Red Asphalt" movie, too. The film repeatedly cuts away from the highway carnage to living rooms and bedrooms where family members describe their grief over the loss of a teen. One father, standing in his son's room, said he had never cried before. Then, after his son's death, he found himself curled up crying on the bathroom floor.

Eric Thomson saw a similar mix of scaring and caring during "start smart."

A few months later, he dismissed the crash videos - not as graphic as those in the new "Red Asphalt" film. He said they "sort of just looked like a movie to me."

But the testimonials from bereaved parents remained fresh in Eric's mind. He could imagine his parents' reaction if he were in a bad crash, which has made him more safety conscious. "I think I'd feel worse for them than for me," he said. "I don't know what they would do."

Eliciting those emotions is part of the state's "Every 15 Minutes" program. Through it, Jesuit High School last semester staged a simulated drunken-driving crash on the football field, with student volunteers posing as the killed and injured. One student lay "dead" on a car hood. Firefighters, police, coroner's officials and hospital employees participated.

Jesuit had suffered a real tragedy in August 2004, when three students were killed and another injured in a high-speed crash at Arden Way and Fulton Avenue. At the "Every 15 Minutes" crash scene, while some students joked about the "blood" makeup, others said the staged event served as a serious reminder about the real accident.

The next day, at a "memorial service" in the school gym, the staged nature of the event seemed to melt away as parents read last messages to their teens.

"My dearest Scott, I love you so much," a crying Theresa Arciniega read. "My heart aches to hold you in my arms. There was so much more I wanted to discover about you. I only know I wish it were me that (God) took."

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About the writer: The Bee's Tony Bizjak can be reached at (916) 321-1059 or tbizjak@sacbee.com.

Tags: DUI News |  Underage drinking

LSU Student Dies with BAC .588

LSU Frat Dies With BAC of .588

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After receiving the following email message I decided to look further into the death of Benjamin Wynne, a college student at LSU during bid week with Sigma Alpha Epsilon. (Here are two press releases from Sigma Alpha Epsilon). First Press Release - 8/27 and Second Press Release - 8/28.

What follows is the email message from one of his brothers and articles from various newspapers and news services.

Ed
www.dui.com

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Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 20:46:02 -0400 (EDT)
To: edwardo@well.com
Subject: Drunkedness

To whom it may concern:

I am a member of a fraternity at Louisiana State University, and recently there was an alcohol related death to another fraternity member on pledge day. His BAC was .588. My question is how many beers were forced down this persons throat in order to reach this level. This is a serious question and I will look forward to your answer soon. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Curious

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Student Found Dead at LSU Frat Party

08/26 1605

BATON ROUGE, La., Aug. 26 (UPI S) -- An overnight fraternity party turned tragic (Tuesday) near the Louisiana State University campus. Paramedics summoned to the house found one student dead of cardiac arrest and four other party-goers so drunk they required hospital treatment.

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LSU Frat Pledge Dies of Alcohol Abuse

BATON ROUGE, La., Aug. 27 (UPI) -- Only days after Louisiana State University was named to the Top 10 Party School list, a 20-year-old fraternity pledge died from acute alcohol intoxication.

Sigma Alpha Epsilon pledge Benjamin Wynne had a blood alcohol level of .588 percent -- well above the .10 percent level to be considered drunk -- when he was taken to Baton Rouge Medical Center early Tuesday morning. Authorities believe Wynne may have consumed 25 to 30 drinks in one hour during a binge drinking fest.

Emergency Medical Services personnel arrived at the SAE house shortly after midnight to find two dozen fraternity members and pledges in various stages of unconsciousness. Wynne and three others were hospitalized, including 21-year-old Donald Hunt of Mandeville who remains in guarded condition. Authorities say there was no evidence of drinking at the frat house, but they believe Wynne went to a private party and an LSU-area bar before his death.

A favorite college nightspot, Murphy's Bar, was selling "Three Wise Men" by the pitcher. The drink is a combination of Bacardi 151 rum, Jagermeister liqueur and Crown Royal whiskey.

The faternity, meanwhile, has been suspended by SAE fraternity headquarters while an investigation is completed. Students can live in the SAE house, but they may not conduct fraternity activities.

Copyright 1997 by United Press International.
All rights reserved. --- Copyright 1997

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Local student dies in LSU fraternity tragedy

By Chad A. Kirtland / The News Banner / August 26, 1997

A Louisiana State University student from the Mandeville area died early Tuesday morning in a Baton Rouge hospital after a fraternity celebration turned into a tragedy.

Benjamin Wynne, 20, was pronounced dead shortly after 1 a.m. at Baton Rouge General Medical Center. The cause of death had not been officially determined at press time, but alcohol abuse is believed to be responsible.

Emergency workers responded to a call at the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house on the LSU campus at about midnight. According to LSU Chancellor William Jenkins, technicians from Baton Rouge Emergency Medical Service found about two dozen students ill or passed out.

Four students were taken to area hospitals for treatment. Wynne and Donald Hunt, 20, of Mandeville, were taken to Baton Rouge General. Wynne, a former Mandeville High School football standout, was pronounced dead shortly after 1 a.m.

Hunt was listed in critical, but guarded condition early Tuesday, but had been upgraded to "improving" by Tuesday afternoon.

Two other students were brought to Our Lady of the Lake hospital, but were discharged Tuesday morning.

"We are in the process of trying to figure out what happened, but the assumption is alcohol abuse," said LSU Dean of Students, Tom Risch. "We have confirmed that they were drinking heavily."

Results from Wynne's autopsy were not available at press time.

Monday was "Bid Day" for LSU fraternities, wherein fraternities bid for new pledges.

Risch said a celebration began at 5 p.m. Later in the day, fraternity members went off campus to continue the festivities.

The SAE brothers returned to the fraternity house around 9 p.m. Emergency medical crews were called around midnight when some brothers became concerned over Wynne's condition.

A representative of the fraternity had no comment on the incident Tuesday afternoon.

"It's a tragedy for us," said Chancellor Jenkins. "We are dealing with a terrible situation here on our campus."

Wynne was a transfer student from Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond.

According to Mandeville High School Athletic Director Skip Curtis, Wynne was a star defensive player in high school and was a former All-District linebacker.

Jenkins said the university has a fairly strict alcohol abuse policy on campus. "The frustration is that once students leave the campus we have no control over their behavior," he added.

Jenkins said several agencies are investigating the incident, including the Baton Rouge Police Department, the Dean of Students and the fraternity.

"When we're in possession of all the facts, we will proceed from there," said Jenkins. "I suspect there will be repercussions (for the fraternity.)"

But he said the important thing now is to support those impacted by the loss. "We must support the family, the fraternity brothers and our entire campus community through the next few weeks as we recover from this tragedy."

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Sentry-News.
Copyright ©1997, Wick Communications, Inc.
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BATON ROUGE -- State alcohol control officials have announced they will begin to conduct sting operations around the state to catch violators of Louisiana alcohol laws. Enforcement officers will set up stings using students and other young people. They will not only target bars and convenience stores, but will conduct raids of areas where students are gathered to find underage drinkers. Both anyone who sells alcohol to a person under 21 or procures it for them and the underage drinker who obtains it can be fined and get up to six months in jail. The crackdown follows the alcohol related death this week of 20-year-old LSU student Ben Wynne.

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BATON ROUGE-- The Louisiana Coalition to Prevent Underage Drinking has called for a candlelight vigil tonight outside of the closed Baton Rouge bar where drinking binge victim Ben Wynne partied with his friends Monday night. The group says it will hold an alcohol awareness vigil outside Murphy's bar where students had celebrated being chosen by fraternities. Early Tuesday, Wynne died of acute alcohol poisoning. The investigation into his death continues and the bar remains closed voluntarily. Officials with Sigma Alpha Epsilon, which had chosen Wynne on Monday to be a member, said they only recently had a national symposium of all S-A-E chapter presidents at which warnings went out about the dangers of binge drinking. Ben Wynne was buried yesterday in New Orleans.

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08/28 1154 UPI Louisiana Second News Briefs

= (UNDATED) - The American Medical Association says the alcohol-related death of a 20-year-old Louisiana State University student points up the need for new initiatives to address the problem of binge drinking on college campuses. The AMA is leading a national effort to change the environmental factors that encourage excessive drinking.

Meanwhile, new enforcement procedures around college campuses are expected to begin this week, with Louisiana getting national attention by the death of Ben Wynne of Mandeville. He died Tuesday from a round of fraternity drinking. Investigators say L-S-U's Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity held a private party at Murphy's bar before pledge Benjamin Wynne died.

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AMA aims to curb binge drinking

CHICAGO, Aug. 28 (UPI) -- The American Medical Association says the alcohol-related death of a 20-year-old Louisiana State University student hammers home the need for initiatives to address the problem of binge drinking on college campuses. The AMA is leading a national effort to change the environmental factors that encourage excessive drinking.

A 1993 Harvard University survey says more than half the students in one-third of U.S. college campuses are binge drinkers. The AMA says, "This is not surprising given the barrage of alcohol advertising and promotions aimed at young people."

The AMA says that by the age of 18, the average teenager has seen more than 100,000 beer commercials. One survey shows 73 percent of nine to 11-year-olds recognized the Budweiser frog second only to Bugs Bunny.

LSU student Benjamin Wynne had a blood alcohol level of .588 percent -- well above the .10 percent level to be considered drunk -- when he was taken to Baton Rouge Medical Center, where he died Tuesday. Authorities believe Wynne may have consumed 25 to 30 drinks in one hour during a binge drinking fest.

The AMA is working with six U.S universities and their surrounding communities to curb binge drinking by changing norms, attitudes, policies and practices affecting drinking on and off campus. The program, "Matter of Degree," is funded by an $11 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. ---

Copyright 1997 by United Press International.
All rights reserved. --- Copyright 1997

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UPI Louisiana First News Briefs

(BATON ROUGE) - The L-S-U Baton Rouge campus is in mourning today after a fraternity party turned tragic for a 20-year-old Mandeville youth. Students drinking at a favorite hangout were celebrating bid day, the day fraternities name the new members they've chosen. The group began to suffer the effects of the binge drinking and returned to the Sigma Alpha Epsilon House. Some people passed out and slept it off, but Benjamin Wynne died of alcohol-induced cardiac arrest or alcohol poisoning.

Paramedics summoned to the scene found Wynne and more than a dozen others passed out. Four people were transported to a hospital and one was admitted for observation. Doctors tried but were unable to save Wynne whose blood-alcohol was six times the legal limit.

Tags: College Drinking |  DUI News

MSU Frats Call for Alcohol Ban

Is The Future Dry for Michigan State University?

BY AUTUMN J. KUCKA
Free Press Special Writer

EAST LANSING -- Three MSU fraternities aim to be alcohol-free by the year 2000. And some dare suggest the campus itself -- known for party guzzling -- might someday ban alcohol from dorms and student hangouts.

"If we were to eventually go to substance-free housing, or dry houses, I can see the university using us as a prime example," said Kelli Milliken, president of MSU's Panhellenic Council of fraternities and sororities.

Going dry won't happen overnight, but alcohol will be a topic this weekend as some of MSU's 3,000 fraternity and sorority members meet with national representatives and school officials to ponder ways to dispel the image of greek houses as drunken party dens.

One frat house, Phi Gamma Delta, is already dry. Two others -- Phi Delta Theta and Sigma Nu -- have been asked by their national organizations to dry out by 2000.

In recent months, fraternities and sororities nationwide have received much attention for drinking exploits.

A 1996 MSU report found that its students drink more than the national average.

Tags: College Drinking |  DUI News

15 Year Old Found DEAD Drunk After Christmas Party

15-Year-Old Dies After Drinking at Family Party

Saturday, December 27, 1997 Page A18
Copyright 1997 San Francisco Chronicle

Patricia Jacobus, Chronicle Staff Writer

South San Francisco detectives are investigating the death of a 15-year-old boy who may have drunk himself to death at a family Christmas Eve party, police said. Ruben Castro drank beer, wine, champagne and hard liquor in excess despite steady warnings from the 30 or so people at the party held by Castro's aunt and uncle, said Sergeant Chuck DeSoto. According to police, sometime between 3 a.m and 5 a.m. on Christmas Day, a relative dragged Castro's limp body to a couch in the garage, where he was to sleep off the intoxication. He never woke. His aunt and uncle found him at 10:30 a.m. Christmas Day lying face down on the garage floor, DeSoto said. It was not clear how Castro, who was still wearing his party clothes, ended up on the floor. ``There are no indications that he was sick, no signs of trauma or physical abuse or fights, nothing at all like that,'' DeSoto said.

The cause of death has not been determined, but detectives said alcohol poisoning is a possibility. Results of toxicology tests that will show the boy's blood-alcohol level are pending. Police also are investigating whether adult relatives and friends were serving drinks to Castro that may have contributed to his death, DeSoto said.

Family members told police that Castro, who was a restaurant dishwasher, had been staying in the garage of his aunt and uncle since he moved from Mexico about six months ago. The teenager reportedly had a history of drinking too much, DeSoto said.

Tags: DUI News |  Underage drinking

September Deadly Month for College Students

Posted 10/7/2004 12:00 AM Updated 10/6/2004 10:08 PM

Friends remember Samantha Spady, who was found dead at a Colorado State fraternity house in September. By Evan Semon, The Rocky Mountain News/AP

Five Binge-Drinking Deaths 'Just the Tip of the Iceberg'

By Robert Davis

USA TODAY

September has been deadly for binge-drinking college students

Five underclassmen in four states appear to have drunk themselves to death, police say, after friends sent their pals to bed assuming that they would "sleep it off."

Some college presidents are promising to crack down on underage drinking — four of the students were too young to drink legally. Others have shut down fraternity houses where bodies were found.

But one expert calls those moves too little, too late. "It's locking the barn door after the horse has been stolen," says Henry Wechsler, a Harvard University researcher who has studied campus drinking. He says schools with weak enforcement of drinking rules put students at greater risk.

"The schools that have the greatest problems take the easiest solutions," he says. "They have educational programs and re-motivation programs. But they don't try to change the system. These deaths are just the tip of the iceberg."

In some college towns, drink specials at bars and loose enforcement of liquor laws make it easier and cheaper for students to get drunk than to go to a movie, Wechsler says. The result, research suggests, is 1,400 student deaths a year, including alcohol-related falls and car crashes.

"Some schools enforce," he says. "But others have a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy. It's a wink."

Others say schools can't stop a young adult who chooses to drink.

Drinking problems start in high school and are simply let loose in college, says the American Council on Education, a Washington-based advocacy group that represents about 1,800 colleges and universities.

"Shouldn't colleges crack down on alcohol consumption?" asks Sheldon Steinbach, ACE's general counsel. "They could. But you would be turning the college into a quasi-police state and impairing their ability to grow up."

All of these students, last seen drinking heavily, were found dead:

• Samantha Spady, 19, of Beatrice, Neb., was found Sept. 5 in a Colorado State University fraternity.
• Lynn Gordon Bailey Jr., 18, of Dallas, was found Sept. 17 at a University of Colorado fraternity house.
• Thomas Ryan Hauser, 23, a junior from Springfield, Va., was found Sept. 19 in his apartment near Virginia Tech.
• Blae Adam Hammontree, 19, of Medford, Okla., was found Sept. 30 in a fraternity house at the University of Oklahoma.
• Bradley Barrett Kemp, 20, of McGehee, Ark., was found at home Saturday at the University of Arkansas.

The official cause of death has not been determined for the three most recent cases.

Colleges with large Greek systems and big, highly competitive intercollegiate athletic programs have the highest rates of student binge drinking, Wechsler says. "There is a culture of drinking on campuses that must change," says Patty Spady, Samantha's mother. "People put her in a room thinking that she would sleep it off."

But chug too many drinks — Samantha is said to have consumed up to 40 beers or shots of vodka the night she died — and the blood alcohol level continues to rise even after a person passes out. Alcohol kills when the person is too intoxicated to maintain his own airway. He then suffocates on his own vomit or on an otherwise harmless obstruction, such as a pillow.

"These kids don't know this," says Spady, who set up a foundation (SAMspadyfoundation.org) to find ways to prevent deaths on campus. "Drunks cannot take care of drunks." Spady urges students to "stay sober to take care of your friends."

Tags: College Drinking |  DUI News

Prom Goers Must Submit to Breathanalyzers

Promgoers to be Tested for Alcohol

ARLINGTON, Texas, Feb. 7 (UPI) -- Students attending proms in a Texas school district will be administered tests for alcohol before they are allowed admittance. The new policy was adopted Thursday night by the Arlington school district to combat teen drinking.

Breathalyzer and other sobriety tests will be administered to students as they show up for the proms. Students will also be given a litmus test to detect any alcohol in their systems.

School Superintendent Lynn Hale said the tests are "simple and nonintrusive" and will ensure that students can enjoy an alcohol-free prom. Parents will be called to pickup any student whose alcohol level is above zero. The student will also be placed in alternative education for the remainder of the year.

Some students have spoken out against the new policy, saying it violates their constitutional rights.

The district began developing a new drinking policy after a zero- tolerance plan imposed by Hale was overturned in court. The action came after a 16-year-old girl reported she was raped at an off-campus drinking party attended by more than 75 students from an Arlington high school. ---

Copyright 1997 by United Press International.
All rights reserved. ---

Copyright 1997

Tags: Texas DUI |  Underage drinking