The Taconic Parkway Crash
Nov. 20th, 2009 02:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceebeegeeThere's a fascinating article in New York magazine this week--I read on Monday and I've been thinking about it ever since. It's about that horrific crash on the Taconic Parkway that happened this summer, the one where 8 people, including 4 kids, were killed. What happened was a woman, Diane Schuler, with her daughter, son and three nieces in the car, went the wrong way down the Taconic Parkway--she went up an exit ramp and pulled into the inside breakdown lane and drove that way for about two miles until she slammed into an SUV going the other (correct) way. Everyone in her vehicle, except her son, was killed, and all three passengers in the SUV were also killed.
I found that sentence early in the article, "passing drivers said she stared straight ahead, her expression serene and oblivious, her hands at ten and two on the steering wheel" haunting. In fact it took me so, that I started doing research to see how the author had learned that--I can't find that detail, I may have to email him directly. I'd only barely heard of the story before I read the article (with no TV, I miss a lot of news, sadly) and my first exposure to it was with the article. I had a lot of very mixed feelings after reading it and after my research I'm even more engaged. The timeline in the article is eerie. She and her husband and other family members had gone camping and she left with all those kids around 9:30 am and stopped at a McDonald's for coffee and OJ, and I guess the kids ate there (this is not only from the article but from what else I've read). Around 12 noon, her sister-in-law Jackie (mother of three of the girls in the car) calls Diane's cell and they have a normal conversation, no apparent slurring or impairment. However just an hour later one of the nieces calls her dad, Jackie's husband Warren--there's something wrong with her aunt and they can hear kids crying in the background. The dad speaks to Diane who's disoriented and slurring. He tells her to stay put, he's coming to get her but she ends the call. And he calls back--again and again and again, as he's driving to try to find her, but does not call 911. She starts driving again and at some point during all this, witnesses apparently saw her at the side of the road, looking as though she were vomiting.
Those poor, terrified children. Oh man. That just makes my heart hurt. Those little girls--the oldest, 9 years old Emma, trying to handle this situation she knew was bad, trying to keep her sisters and cousins safe, doing all the right things by calling dad and telling him the signs where they were, and none of it helped. Because when they did an autopsy on Diane, she had an enormous amount of alcohol in her, 10 shots' worth, plus evidence that she'd been smoking pot within the hour. More than that, she had raw alcohol, indigested alcohol, in her stomach--so she'd kept on drinking even after she must've known she was hammered. What the hell? What could possibly explain that? How does she go from coherent and together at 12 to a complete mess an hour later? What the hell happened? Did she get some kind of bad news, did she think of something or did the alcohol act differently on her that day for some reason? I just don't get what would impel her to drink such an enormous amount when she had 5 kids in the car, especially when she'd never even come close to slipping like this before (had never shown up drunk to a PTA meeting or work or whatever).
The husband, Danny, is in complete denial. The article begins and ends with him--he is doing everything he can to explain her driving while ignoring the pot and the alcohol. He will admit literally no flaws in her whatsoever. He hired a notorious lawyer, the guy who defended Joey Buttafuoco, so he has no credibility at all and the article certainly does nothing to reverse that impression. The lawyer and the husband have made several public appearances (Larry King, press conferences, etc.) all to try to weaken the idea that Diane Schuler got hammered as she was driving, that she knowingly drove drunk. I actually feel very bad for this man--even though Diane was clearly at fault, he still lost her horribly. He lost his wife, and his daughter. Yes, apparently she had severe problems and caused the death of a bunch of innocent people but it takes time to come to terms with that. And there's the grief over his daughter, plus the stress of dealing with his son's injuries. He must be in agony right now, under unimaginable stress. I have a lot of compassion for this man.
Now, the family of the men in the other car are also in great pain--Mike Bastardi lost his brother and his father. He is also suffering unimaginably. And yet with that, I am a little taken aback at some of the statements coming from him and his wife. His wife says "Not even a second have I felt sorry for Danny. This becomes a man you can't hate enough."
Really? Can't hate enough? Okay, preface every statement I'm about to make with: I have never been in that situation, and perhaps I would react exactly the same. But--you can't hate him enough? I can understand hating what he's doing, I can understand your anger at the apparent attempt to deny what seems pretty obvious--the woman drove drunk and killed innocent people. But you have never felt one bit of sympathy who is just as bad off as you are? You can't hate him enough, really? Him and not Diane? He lost his wife and his daughter. Danny's brother in law Warren lost ALL THREE of his daughters--and they have anger for him as well.
"If he'd called 911 immediately, we wouldn't be here," Mike tells me. In Warren, Mike sees a kind of depraved indifference. When Warren told a terrified Emma to stay put, the minivan was parked directly across from the state-police barracks. Would Warren really risk the lives of his three daughters?
OF COURSE NOT. Look, I couldn't tell you why he didn't call 9111, but people do make mistakes under pressure. Jesus. Depraved indifference? All three of his daughters are dead--don't you think he's been punished enough? I have to wonder if the Bastardis have children--I don't and even I know, no parent would EVER trust their kids to someone they knew might drive drunk. Ever.
He and Jeanne prefer living culprits, aiders and abettors...
Yes, that seems obvious. I guess it is very difficult to accept the idea that there's nothing anyone still living could've done--there's a human need to try to find a correctable narrative, to rectify the situation in some small way. So we pass Megan's Laws and things like that, or in the past, we make up myths about vengeful gods to give us the illusion of control, if only I'd done that, this wouldn't have happened...
"They should come forward, come clean," says Mike, and says that would be enough. “And we would feel better. We would."
I just don't know if I agree with that. I think right now nothing will make them feel better. I just don't think they're there yet. Maybe they never will be.
One thing that does sit wrong with me--I'm always uncomfortable when the spouse of the primary victim seems more invested in vengeance than the actual injured party. I think Jeanne Bastardi should be supporting her husband, not whipping him into greater heights of anger. He can obviously speak for himself. I can't imagine she's much solace to him, because she's just reinforcing his anger and hatred.
But getting back to that sad, sad storyline--something happened to this woman, something made her drink so much in just a few hours and in my mind is this image. As time passes by, as she gets more and more intoxicated, likely scenarios start shrinking, the probability that something catastrophic will happen is increasing. Her world is getting smaller and smaller every minute until at the very end, there she is, "her expression serene and oblivious," barreling down the wrong way of the highway, until finally her luck runs out. You can almost see the numbers hovering around her invisibly, the possibilities and probabilities, every turn, every stop, every phone call, every thought changing those numbers.
For some reason when it comes to avoidable--painfully avoidable--deaths like these, I think along those ways, about probability and scenarios and how they shrink. In 2004, I thought a lot about Nicholas Berg's murder, and how he came to end up in the hands of those savages--he made the decision to go a war zone, he was detained and so missed her first flight out, was released and declined the second flight out, went to Baghdad...and every one of these things made his world, the likelihood of his survival, smaller and smaller, like a scope narrowing. (Note, BTW, I am not in any way trying to sound as though I'm blaming the victim or assigning responsibility to anyone except the murderers. Just looking at it as from mathematical and dramatic perspective.) But that idea of the world is getting smaller and smaller and her choices cut off more avenues of escape--if I made a film of this, I know exactly how I would end it.
I hope the Bastardis, Danny and his son, and Warren and his wife find some peace. I really pray for that.
I found that sentence early in the article, "passing drivers said she stared straight ahead, her expression serene and oblivious, her hands at ten and two on the steering wheel" haunting. In fact it took me so, that I started doing research to see how the author had learned that--I can't find that detail, I may have to email him directly. I'd only barely heard of the story before I read the article (with no TV, I miss a lot of news, sadly) and my first exposure to it was with the article. I had a lot of very mixed feelings after reading it and after my research I'm even more engaged. The timeline in the article is eerie. She and her husband and other family members had gone camping and she left with all those kids around 9:30 am and stopped at a McDonald's for coffee and OJ, and I guess the kids ate there (this is not only from the article but from what else I've read). Around 12 noon, her sister-in-law Jackie (mother of three of the girls in the car) calls Diane's cell and they have a normal conversation, no apparent slurring or impairment. However just an hour later one of the nieces calls her dad, Jackie's husband Warren--there's something wrong with her aunt and they can hear kids crying in the background. The dad speaks to Diane who's disoriented and slurring. He tells her to stay put, he's coming to get her but she ends the call. And he calls back--again and again and again, as he's driving to try to find her, but does not call 911. She starts driving again and at some point during all this, witnesses apparently saw her at the side of the road, looking as though she were vomiting.
Those poor, terrified children. Oh man. That just makes my heart hurt. Those little girls--the oldest, 9 years old Emma, trying to handle this situation she knew was bad, trying to keep her sisters and cousins safe, doing all the right things by calling dad and telling him the signs where they were, and none of it helped. Because when they did an autopsy on Diane, she had an enormous amount of alcohol in her, 10 shots' worth, plus evidence that she'd been smoking pot within the hour. More than that, she had raw alcohol, indigested alcohol, in her stomach--so she'd kept on drinking even after she must've known she was hammered. What the hell? What could possibly explain that? How does she go from coherent and together at 12 to a complete mess an hour later? What the hell happened? Did she get some kind of bad news, did she think of something or did the alcohol act differently on her that day for some reason? I just don't get what would impel her to drink such an enormous amount when she had 5 kids in the car, especially when she'd never even come close to slipping like this before (had never shown up drunk to a PTA meeting or work or whatever).
The husband, Danny, is in complete denial. The article begins and ends with him--he is doing everything he can to explain her driving while ignoring the pot and the alcohol. He will admit literally no flaws in her whatsoever. He hired a notorious lawyer, the guy who defended Joey Buttafuoco, so he has no credibility at all and the article certainly does nothing to reverse that impression. The lawyer and the husband have made several public appearances (Larry King, press conferences, etc.) all to try to weaken the idea that Diane Schuler got hammered as she was driving, that she knowingly drove drunk. I actually feel very bad for this man--even though Diane was clearly at fault, he still lost her horribly. He lost his wife, and his daughter. Yes, apparently she had severe problems and caused the death of a bunch of innocent people but it takes time to come to terms with that. And there's the grief over his daughter, plus the stress of dealing with his son's injuries. He must be in agony right now, under unimaginable stress. I have a lot of compassion for this man.
Now, the family of the men in the other car are also in great pain--Mike Bastardi lost his brother and his father. He is also suffering unimaginably. And yet with that, I am a little taken aback at some of the statements coming from him and his wife. His wife says "Not even a second have I felt sorry for Danny. This becomes a man you can't hate enough."
Really? Can't hate enough? Okay, preface every statement I'm about to make with: I have never been in that situation, and perhaps I would react exactly the same. But--you can't hate him enough? I can understand hating what he's doing, I can understand your anger at the apparent attempt to deny what seems pretty obvious--the woman drove drunk and killed innocent people. But you have never felt one bit of sympathy who is just as bad off as you are? You can't hate him enough, really? Him and not Diane? He lost his wife and his daughter. Danny's brother in law Warren lost ALL THREE of his daughters--and they have anger for him as well.
"If he'd called 911 immediately, we wouldn't be here," Mike tells me. In Warren, Mike sees a kind of depraved indifference. When Warren told a terrified Emma to stay put, the minivan was parked directly across from the state-police barracks. Would Warren really risk the lives of his three daughters?
OF COURSE NOT. Look, I couldn't tell you why he didn't call 9111, but people do make mistakes under pressure. Jesus. Depraved indifference? All three of his daughters are dead--don't you think he's been punished enough? I have to wonder if the Bastardis have children--I don't and even I know, no parent would EVER trust their kids to someone they knew might drive drunk. Ever.
He and Jeanne prefer living culprits, aiders and abettors...
Yes, that seems obvious. I guess it is very difficult to accept the idea that there's nothing anyone still living could've done--there's a human need to try to find a correctable narrative, to rectify the situation in some small way. So we pass Megan's Laws and things like that, or in the past, we make up myths about vengeful gods to give us the illusion of control, if only I'd done that, this wouldn't have happened...
"They should come forward, come clean," says Mike, and says that would be enough. “And we would feel better. We would."
I just don't know if I agree with that. I think right now nothing will make them feel better. I just don't think they're there yet. Maybe they never will be.
One thing that does sit wrong with me--I'm always uncomfortable when the spouse of the primary victim seems more invested in vengeance than the actual injured party. I think Jeanne Bastardi should be supporting her husband, not whipping him into greater heights of anger. He can obviously speak for himself. I can't imagine she's much solace to him, because she's just reinforcing his anger and hatred.
But getting back to that sad, sad storyline--something happened to this woman, something made her drink so much in just a few hours and in my mind is this image. As time passes by, as she gets more and more intoxicated, likely scenarios start shrinking, the probability that something catastrophic will happen is increasing. Her world is getting smaller and smaller every minute until at the very end, there she is, "her expression serene and oblivious," barreling down the wrong way of the highway, until finally her luck runs out. You can almost see the numbers hovering around her invisibly, the possibilities and probabilities, every turn, every stop, every phone call, every thought changing those numbers.
For some reason when it comes to avoidable--painfully avoidable--deaths like these, I think along those ways, about probability and scenarios and how they shrink. In 2004, I thought a lot about Nicholas Berg's murder, and how he came to end up in the hands of those savages--he made the decision to go a war zone, he was detained and so missed her first flight out, was released and declined the second flight out, went to Baghdad...and every one of these things made his world, the likelihood of his survival, smaller and smaller, like a scope narrowing. (Note, BTW, I am not in any way trying to sound as though I'm blaming the victim or assigning responsibility to anyone except the murderers. Just looking at it as from mathematical and dramatic perspective.) But that idea of the world is getting smaller and smaller and her choices cut off more avenues of escape--if I made a film of this, I know exactly how I would end it.
I hope the Bastardis, Danny and his son, and Warren and his wife find some peace. I really pray for that.
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Date: 2009-11-20 08:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-21 01:53 am (UTC)