Families Stunned By Taconic Crash Revelations

[TinkerBelly]

Additional Information...

Witnesses Saw Wrong-Way Driver Get Ill

(Nov. 9) -- Witnesses saw Diane Schuler pull to the side of the road and get sick before she drove the wrong way down a New York freeway July 26 and caused a deadly car crash, according to police reports obtained by the New York Post.
Schuler first pulled over her minivan at 11:45 a.m. on the day of the crash, the police reports say. Witnesses "noticed an adult female outside of the vehicle with brown hair, wearing blue, knee-length shorts, bent over with her hands on her knees, as if throwing up," the records say.
Skip over this content She was seen stopping again a short time later just north of a rest stop, the Post reported. At 1:35 p.m., she crashed her vehicle into an SUV carrying three men on the Taconic State Parkway, killing them as well as herself, her 2-year-old daughter and her three young nieces.

Autopsy results released in August showed Schuler was driving drunk and had smoked marijuana before the crash.
Late last week, The Associated Press reported that Schuler's relatives told police she used pot as a way of coping with stress
Schuler's husband told police she "smoked marijuana once in a while to relieve the stress of work and the kids," a police report said.

Schuler's sister-in-law told police she "didn't believe in medicine and used marijuana to relax," usually smoking after her children went to bed, according to the report.
Relatives of the crash victims got the report Friday during a meeting with police and prosecutors, then made it available to reporters.

http://news.aol.com/article/witnesses-saw-wrong-way-driver-diane/758941?icid=main

[oohsofaabulous]

And now suddenly "her relatives told police she used pot as a way of coping" and her husband told police she "smoked marijuana once in a while to relieve the stress of work and the kids." WHERE IS ALL OF THIS COMING FROM?

And if the relatives and husband have come forward and said this, why have they all been lying and acting like crazed maniacs in denial this whole time. If they ALL have been lying this much, for this long, I'm sorry but there should be some responsibility held for them. Isn't that tampering with a police investigation? I'm sure Lying to the police is a crime....

[Karalicious]

[quote author=oohsofaabulous link=topic=21513.msg1442038#msg1442038 date=1257796019]
And now suddenly "her relatives told police she used pot as a way of coping" and her husband told police she "smoked marijuana once in a while to relieve the stress of work and the kids." WHERE IS ALL OF THIS COMING FROM?

And if the relatives and husband have come forward and said this, why have they all been lying and acting like crazed maniacs in denial this whole time. If they ALL have been lying this much, for this long, I'm sorry but there should be some responsibility held for them. Isn't that tampering with a police investigation? I'm sure Lying to the police is a crime....
[/quote] Yeah it is, just ask Casey Anthony

[TinkerBelly]

When I first read the story of passers by seeing her possibly throwing up on the side of the road I thought.....if she puked twice and still had such a large amount of alcohol in her stomach then she really really sucked some booze down.  :|

[mialynneb]

[quote author=TinkerBelly link=topic=21513.msg1442353#msg1442353 date=1257810892]
When I first read the story of passers by seeing her possibly throwing up on the side of the road I thought.....if she puked twice and still had such a large amount of alcohol in her stomach then she really really sucked some booze down.  :|
[/quote]

That's just insane :x

I just can't and will never understand this woman's thinking.  This whole thing just makes me angry.  She destroyed so many people's lives and those poor people that came across the scene to see children being pulled out of the vehicle.  I hope they are getting help - I just can't imagine the nightmares.

[merdeath]

[quote author=TinkerBelly link=topic=21513.msg1441944#msg1441944 date=1257791196]
Additional Information...

Witnesses Saw Wrong-Way Driver Get Ill

(Nov. 9) -- Witnesses saw Diane Schuler pull to the side of the road and get sick before she drove the wrong way down a New York freeway July 26 and caused a deadly car crash, according to police reports obtained by the New York Post.
Schuler first pulled over her minivan at 11:45 a.m. on the day of the crash, the police reports say. Witnesses "noticed an adult female outside of the vehicle with brown hair, wearing blue, knee-length shorts, bent over with her hands on her knees, as if throwing up," the records say.
Skip over this content She was seen stopping again a short time later just north of a rest stop, the Post reported. At 1:35 p.m., she crashed her vehicle into an SUV carrying three men on the Taconic State Parkway, killing them as well as herself, her 2-year-old daughter and her three young nieces.

Autopsy results released in August showed Schuler was driving drunk and had smoked marijuana before the crash.
Late last week, The Associated Press reported that Schuler's relatives told police she used pot as a way of coping with stress
Schuler's husband told police she "smoked marijuana once in a while to relieve the stress of work and the kids," a police report said.

Schuler's sister-in-law told police she "didn't believe in medicine and used marijuana to relax," usually smoking after her children went to bed, according to the report.
Relatives of the crash victims got the report Friday during a meeting with police and prosecutors, then made it available to reporters.

http://news.aol.com/article/witnesses-saw-wrong-way-driver-diane/758941?icid=main
[/quote]

Whoa.  This is probably why the girls were saying their aunt was sick. 

[songbirdsong]

[quote author=TinkerBelly link=topic=21513.msg1442353#msg1442353 date=1257810892]
When I first read the story of passers by seeing her possibly throwing up on the side of the road I thought.....if she puked twice and still had such a large amount of alcohol in her stomach then she really really sucked some booze down.  :|
[/quote]

Me too...I don't recall directly, did they measure her BAC levels, or were they just going off of the amount of alcohol in her stomach?

[neenerneener]

[quote author=songbirdsong link=topic=21513.msg1442812#msg1442812 date=1257831470]
Me too...I don't recall directly, did they measure her BAC levels, or were they just going off of the amount of alcohol in her stomach?
[/quote]

i think the recorded her BAC levels.  and if she did throw up, and there was alcohol in her stomach still, wouldnt that probably mean that she kept drinking even after being sick?

[TinkerBelly]

Quote from an earlier article

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

[CocoBongo]

Hi

I've been a lurker here for a while (I know we scare you guys :lol:) however, I've just registered now to post this link (forgive me if I do it wrong):

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-tian-dayton/dianne-schuler-when-denia_b_351295.html

I've read all 19 pages this morning, this case just horrifies me, and unless I've missed something, whilst it's been reported the SIL had come clean about Dianne's pot use I'm pretty sure this is the first time this has been mentioned:

"Anolik also said that Joan Schuler told the police that her sister-in-law drank heavily on a regular basis, "she was a hard drinker."

Hardly shocking, but I think the first time it's been confirmed by anyone within the family.

On a side note, I spend enough time here already, god knows how I'm gonna keep away now I can actually reply to posts!

[CocoBongo]

Also this:

http://www.examiner.com/x-19632-Salt-Lake-City-Headlines-Examiner~y2009m10d27-911-call-released-in-Diane-Schuler-case--story-on-Oprah

"Yesterday, a 911 phone call was released from Warren Hance (Diane Schuler's brother), the nieces' father asking Verizon to track the cell phone in the mini-van that Schuler was driving. One of the nieces called her house and said that her aunt was driving erratically and they were scared. Diane Schuler had stopped answering her cell phone and Hance had lost communication, so he asked if 911 operators could get Verizon wireless on the phone to trace their location.
Someone made three wrong number phone calls from Diane Schuler's phone about 25 minutes before she entered the wrong way entrance on the freeway. It will probably never be known who made those calls or why."

Those poor kids must have been terrified.

[merdeath]

This top part was posted but the rest I think is new:

Two hours before Diane  Schuler drove the wrong way on an upstate parkway, killing herself and seven others, a motorist saw someone who looked and dressed like her doubled-over on the side of the road, "with her hands on her knees as if throwing up," according to a state police report released Monday.

A half-hour before the July 26 Taconic State Parkway crash, the West Babylon mother was incoherent - "out of it" - on the phone with her brother, Warren Hance, whom she mistakenly called "Danny," the name of her husband, the report said. In a separate call minutes earlier, Hance's wife, Jackie, could hear her three young girls crying in the background.


And just before Schuler smashed the Hances' minivan head-on into an oncoming sport utility vehicle, "she had a look of sheer panic on her face," a witness whose vehicle just missed being hit told police.  

The New York State Police investigative report - released Monday by an attorney for two Yonkers victims - revealed disturbing and heartbreaking new details about the crash in which Schuler, 36, died, along with her daughter, Erin, 2, the Hances' three daughters - Emma, 8, Alyson, 7, and Kate, 5 - and three Yonkers men in the SUV - Guy Bastardi, 49, and his father, Michael Bastardi, 81, and Daniel Longo, 74. Schuler's son, Bryan, 5, survived. Kate had a "faint heartbeat" after the crash but died at a hospital, the report said.

The report upends the Schuler family's recent portrayals of Diane Schuler as a loving, responsible mother who did not get drunk or high. In fact, before toxicology results showing Schuler was drunk and high on marijuana during the crash, her family told police that she drank socially and smoked marijuana "on a regular basis."

Schuler's sister-in-law, Jay Schuler, told police on July 31 that Schuler "didn't believe in medicine and used marihuana [sic] to relax. She usually would smoke at night after the kids would go to bed," the report said. Her husband, Daniel Schuler, told police the same day that "she smoked marijuana once in awhile to relieve the stress of work and the kids."

On Route 17, on Diane Schuler's route back to Long Island from a Sullivan County camping trip, three witnesses, whose names were redacted, told police they saw a red minivan with children inside pulled over and someone who looked like Schuler sitting outside the vehicle, the report said. One witness said she seemed to be vomiting.

The police report also does not mention medical theories offered by Daniel Schuler's attorney, Dominic Barbara of Garden City, who has said Diane had diabetes, a major tooth abscess and a lump on her leg. Before Barbara's involvement, Schuler's family told police she "was in excellent health and had no medical conditions," the report said.

Barbara did not return a call.

Thomas Ruskin, a private investigator for Daniel Schuler, said he doubts the woman the witness saw vomiting was Diane Schuler. "Even if it was, it goes to verify what the Schulers have been saying all along: that this was a medical event, not a drinking episode," Ruskin said. "If she vomited, her body wouldn't have metabolized the alcohol."

Ruskin said Jay Schuler remembers only telling police that Diane smoked marijuana "occasionally" until her second child was born two years ago.

Brian Sichol, the Bastardi's attorney, obtained the police reports Friday from the Westchester district attorney's office. State Police did not return calls.

The report also said Warren Hance did not call police right away after the 1:10 p.m. call from his daughters ended, but instead picked up his father nearby in Floral Park and drove toward Tarrytown, where he believed the minivan would be, the report said. Jackie Hance called police at 1:40 p.m., five minutes after the crash.

"If only they would have called police right away," said Sichol.


IMO...If she drank so much she had to pull over to puke, she wasn't a drunk.  Drunks know their limit in a sense.  Something happened for her to be so destructive.

I have such mixed emotions probably because I am an alcoholic.

[oohsofaabulous]

[quote author=CocoBongo link=topic=21513.msg1442934#msg1442934 date=1257865485]
Hi

I've been a lurker here for a while (I know we scare you guys :lol:) however, I've just registered now to post this link (forgive me if I do it wrong):

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-tian-dayton/dianne-schuler-when-denia_b_351295.html

I've read all 19 pages this morning, this case just horrifies me, and unless I've missed something, whilst it's been reported the SIL had come clean about Dianne's pot use I'm pretty sure this is the first time this has been mentioned:

"Anolik also said that Joan Schuler told the police that her sister-in-law drank heavily on a regular basis, "she was a hard drinker."

Hardly shocking, but I think the first time it's been confirmed by anyone within the family.

On a side note, I spend enough time here already, god knows how I'm gonna keep away now I can actually reply to posts!
[/quote]


Welcome :) Thanks for contributing some great info.

Now, what the hell is going on here. Truthfully, I'm too cynical to just automatically believe something a family member says, however, we need answers here. Honestly, this accident haunts me daily. I sit around for hours sometimes trying to figure out what could have possibly gone on in that woman's head and even worse....the children's heads. It just breaks my heart. I mean, I want to feel anger towards this woman, I do, but those feelings are almost masked by the sheer confusion. How did this happen?

[Nancy Drew]

[quote author=oohsofaabulous link=topic=21513.msg1443755#msg1443755 date=1257937204]

Welcome :) Thanks for contributing some great info.

Now, what the hell is going on here. Truthfully, I'm too cynical to just automatically believe something a family member says, however, we need answers here. Honestly, this accident haunts me daily. I sit around for hours sometimes trying to figure out what could have possibly gone on in that woman's head and even worse....the children's heads. It just breaks my heart. I mean, I want to feel anger towards this woman, I do, but those feelings are almost masked by the sheer confusion. How did this happen?
[/quote]There was a really good article re: this in....maybe 3 Peoples ago? If anyone hasn't seen the article, I would be happy to PM it to you. Seriously eye-opening- heartbreaking but makes a lot of sense, and probably explains this case better than anything else ever could/will.

[TinkerBelly]

[quote author=missberi link=topic=21513.msg1443687#msg1443687 date=1257916139]
.............
IMO...If she drank so much she had to pull over to puke, she wasn't a drunk.  Drunks know their limit in a sense.  Something happened for her to be so destructive.

I have such mixed emotions probably because I am an alcoholic.
[/quote]

I know alcoholics who will puke and then keep drinking.

[quote author=Nancy Drew link=topic=21513.msg1443756#msg1443756 date=1257937421]
There was a really good article re: this in....maybe 3 Peoples ago? If anyone hasn't seen the article, I would be happy to PM it to you. Seriously eye-opening- heartbreaking but makes a lot of sense, and probably explains this case better than anything else ever could/will.
[/quote]

Can you post it here?

[sarabei]

PM it to me if you don't mind I would like to read it!

[CocoBongo]

I would like is PMing if that's okay.

I also found a site yesterday with a video with one of the 911 calls made by friends and family (apparently a lot of them called worried but unknowingly the crash had already happened by then I think). What was awful was the person on the 911 call says:

"The girls just called in distress. They said their aunt is driving erratically, we think she is sick".

It make me feel sick thinking what must have been going through their heads and how terrified they must have been.

I remember when I was around 17 and had an argument with a then boyfriend whilst we were on the motorway, he deliberately swerved into the next lane saying he was going to make us crash into another car etc etc, and the fear of that was horrendous, so to imagine how these young children must have been feeling going the WRONG way, and presumably begging their aunt to stop...it's just awful.

[CocoBongo]

Sorry I forgot to link to the video with the 911 calls:

http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/taconic-lawyer-seeks-accessories-homicide/story?id=8923794

[Ron_NYC]

Fuck this drunk asshole murderer. Just wanted to say that. Carry on.

[bowieluva]

IMO...If she drank so much she had to pull over to puke, she wasn't a drunk.  Drunks know their limit in a sense.  Something happened for her to be so destructive.

I have such mixed emotions probably because I am an alcoholic.

Wut.
You are wrong, no offense. Anyone who's watched Intervention knows alcoholics puke all over themselves all the time. To be a drunk, you must have no concept of a limit. Or not care at all. That's where alcoholism develops. My mom's whole family are alcoholics and they puke, drive wasted all the time. And they've been like this for upwards of forty years.

Like...being an alcoholic IS destructive. I don't even know if I get your point at all.

[Nancy Drew]

Yeah I will try to find it online- if I can't I'll scan it this week (that's what school scanners are for!)

Mostly about other moms who used to do this but never had such a tragic outcome

[Ron_NYC]

[quote author=Nancy Drew link=topic=21513.msg1444085#msg1444085 date=1257970563]
Yeah I will try to find it online- if I can't I'll scan it this week (that's what school scanners are for!)

Mostly about other moms who used to do this but never had such a tragic outcome
[/quote]
But people will defend them no matter what cause they're fuckin housewives. Makes me sick.

[Nancy Drew]

[quote author=Ron_NYC link=topic=21513.msg1444090#msg1444090 date=1257970718]
But people will defend them no matter what cause they're fuckin housewives. Makes me sick.
[/quote]I'm not defending them and they don't defend themselves in the article. They just talk about how they used to do it and the impact it had on their lives even though they (by chance) never had an accident like Diane's.

[Ron_NYC]

[quote author=Nancy Drew link=topic=21513.msg1444171#msg1444171 date=1257973386]
I'm not defending them and they don't defend themselves in the article. They just talk about how they used to do it and the impact it had on their lives even though they (by chance) never had an accident like Diane's.
[/quote]
Really? That is really hard to believe. WOw.

[Nancy Drew]

[quote author=Ron_NYC link=topic=21513.msg1444176#msg1444176 date=1257973600]
Really? That is really hard to believe. WOw.
[/quote]Yeah it's super interesting. Ugh I wish I was home right now, I'd get it. I'm going to try to search online but usually People just puts their stupid celeb shit online.