Articles Posted in Drunk Driving

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Chalk one up for Orange County, California in the quest for innovative ways to combat drunk driving. According to a recent article in the Orange County Register a recent student assembly in the San Clemente High School gym featured “an actual court session and sentencing of a DUI defendant.”

The paper reports that the County Superior Court session was moved to the school for part of one day as a way of emphasizing the seriousness of drunk driving and its consequences. Placing the session in the school allows anti-drunk driving activists to demonstrate this directly to teens – a group who have traditionally both been at extremely high risk for drunk driving injuries and fatalities while also being unusually difficult to reach in effective ways.

A session later in the day at the same school featured “an Orange County deputy district attorney (discussing) family consequences from a teen DUI or DUI-related crash.”

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Fox News used to run a regular segment called “stupid criminals.” If it were still on the air the subject of today’s Oregon drunk driving blog would definitely be a candidate.

According to The Oregonian, Aaron Arrell killed a woman in an Oregon fatal hit-and-run accident in March, and was apprehended in large part because he tried to cover his tracks by having his wife phone police to report their van – the vehicle involved in the accident – stolen. “Had they not called, it may have gone unsolved,” the paper quotes a Multnomah County prosecutor saying.

When police caught up with Arrell – based largely on the description of the vehicle that his wife had given them – he tested for blood alcohol at almost twice the legal limit, according to the paper. It also emerged that he was driving on a suspended license, and had been cited twice previously for doing so in the weeks prior to the Portland drunk driving fatality.

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A Clatsop County court has convicted a 45-year old Portland man in a case stemming from a fatal drunk driving car crash last year, according to The Oregonian.

The case of Ken Middleton’s Portland fatal car crash is particularly shocking not only because of the sheer amount of alcohol he consumed in the hours leading up to the accident, but also because he got behind the wheel so completely intoxicated despite having his own 13-year-old daughter riding with him. The Daily Astorian reported that Middleton, at his trial, “admitted he had consumed at least 12 beers that day.” His daughter, mercifully, “suffered only minor injuries,” according to The Oregonian.

In addition to Oregon drunk driving Middleton was convicted of manslaughter, second-degree assault and three counts of reckless endangering, The Oregonian reports. The manslaughter charge stems from the death of Andrew Church, a motorcyclist whom Middleton struck head on when he drifted over the centerline as he and his daughter drove along US-30 in Astoria last May.

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An innovative program at a high school in Yamhill recently brought together students and local safety officials to demonstrate the dangers of Oregon drunk driving, according to an account in the Yamhill Valley News-Register.

The program, known as SKID (Stopping Kids Intoxicated Driving) was developed in 1998 by the Sheriff’s Office in Washington County, west of Portland. It encourages students to work with local police and fire officials, the sheriff’s office, state police and a local funeral home to demonstrate Oregon drunk driving car crash scenarios that are, in the paper’s words, “highly realistic but not real.”

The demonstration described by the newspaper was designed to simulate the effects of drunk driving and drug use in the imagined aftermath of prom night. In addition to the students assigned to simulate impaired driving, others were texting in the car, some of them riding without wearing seat belts. Those details were designed to emphasize to teens the importance not just of not driving while impaired, but also of not choosing to ride along with an impaired driver.

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A story from Northern California offers a vivid reminder for us here in Oregon that drunk driving can lead to all kinds of trouble above and beyond car crashes. According to a recent account in the Red Bluff Daily News, a man is now in prison after what appears to have been an alcohol-fueled road rage incident on Interstate 5.

The paper reports that the alleged incident unfolded after a 21-year-old driver passed a car on the right. That vehicle was driven by 66-year-old Warren Hawkins. The younger driver reportedly went around Hawkins after driving behind him for some time in the fast lane where Hawkins was reportedly traveling several miles per hour below the speed limit.

Hawkins allegedly responded by first pulling alongside the younger man “yelling and making hand gestures,” and then attempting to side-swipe him twice. He then moved back behind the 21-year-old’s vehicle so that he could ram it – again, twice. The paper reports that Hawkins next followed his alleged victim when he exited the interstate, making a u-turn in an intersection and then coming “back the wrong way… before swerving left to complete a circle” around the younger man. The out-of-control driver was reportedly shouting “death threats out an open window” when police arrived on the scene.

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Oregonians could learn some lessons about the dangers of drunk driving accidents from an incident unfolding to our south, in Northern California.

A 64-year-old retired La Selva Beach man is facing serious charges after what media reports describe as a classic drunk driving hit-and-run accident. The Santa Cruz Sentinel, quoting police sources, says the alleged perpetrator “was driving a 2006 Camry south on State Park Drive approaching the Highway 1 off ramp just before 2 p.m.” last Sunday when he hit a 12-year-old boy in a crosswalk.

The paper reports that the driver fled, but witnesses at the scene “helped identify him” leading to his arrest just over an hour later. The good news is that the child does not appear to have been seriously injured.

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As reported by The Oregonian, the circumstances surrounding a recent two-car Coastal Oregon car accident on Highway 101 raise a number of potential legal issues, including whether the victims may be in a position to press an Oregon dram shop case.

The newspaper, quoting police sources, reports that the accident took place when an Oldsmobile traveling north on US-101 crossed the center line and hit a southbound pick-up truck. “The impact of the crash tore the Oldsmobile in half, with the two sections coming to rest on opposite sides of the highway,” the paper notes. All three people involved in the crash – the driver of the Oldsmobile and the driver and a passenger in the pick-up – were seriously injured.

Police told The Oregonian that alcohol was a factor in the crash, though the exact nature of its involvement is still under investigation.

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Schools in Wallowa, in the far east of Oregon, are targeting distracted driving by going directly to the source: placing students in a car equipped with virtual reality technology to convince them of exactly how real the danger is.

According to the Wallowa County Chieftain roughly 50 of the people put through the simulator on a single day at an area high school wound up being ‘victims’ of Oregon distracted driving or Oregon drunk driving accidents. The paper quotes the “impaired driving awareness instructor” who ran the event saying that in the real world “eighty percent of accidents are due to driver distraction” (a statistic which obviously goes far beyond cellphones to encompass ‘legal’ distractions – such as the radio or CD player or dealing with kids in the back seat).

The project, the paper reports, is organized by “UNITE, a Michigan-based organization that sends three teams around the nation for similar demonstrations at high schools and colleges.” The set-up involves placing students in a stationary car while wearing virtual reality goggles. Both the car and the goggles are connected to a computer. To simulate phone-related distractions and texting students use their own cellphones. Drunk driving is simulated by having the computer acknowledge a students’ actions in the car with the appropriate delay for varying levels of intoxication.

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The driver of a van whose crash left his two passengers dead earlier this week has been charged with a range of offenses, including manslaughter in the first degree and Oregon drunk driving, according to The Oregonian.

The Oregon car accident occurred Tuesday morning near Seal Rock, on the Central Oregon coast. The Oregonian, quoting Oregon State Police, reports that 24-year-old Jose De Leon Colomo was driving north on US-101 when his “van failed to negotiate a left curve, traveled over an embankment, and crashed into a tree, police said. The van broke into several pieces.”

The two passengers in the van were pronounced dead at the scene of the alleged Central Oregon drunk driving crash. Colomo, the driver, was treated at an area hospital before being placed under arrest and transferred to the Lincoln County jail. In addition to drunk driving and manslaughter he has also been charged with recklessly endangering another person and reckless driving, according to The Oregonian.

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A dramatic Oregon car accident near Redmond landed a 25-year-old Prineville woman in prison on suspicion of Oregon drunk driving, according to the Bend Bulletin.

The newspaper reports that Deneice Tebbits “was driving south a few miles south of Redmond shortly before 7 a.m. (last Wednesday) when she attempted to pass a line of cars and spun out of control, crossed three lanes of traffic, and struck a northbound vehicle.” According to MyCentralOregon.com neither Tebbits nor the driver of the car she hit were injured, but Tebbits was arrested at the scene and charged with suspicion of Oregon DUII.

If there were ever a case that illustrates the many dangers of Oregon drunk driving this has to be it. Based on media reporting of the case, we allegedly have an impaired driver (at seven o’clock in the morning!) endangering both herself and a significant other number of motorists.

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