<p>Was this a suicide/homicide? It’s just unfathomable to me that a mother would drink that much vodka and smoke marijuana while driving a vanful of kids in the middle of the afternoon.</p>
<p>10 ounces of vodka? By 1 p.m. in the afternoon? If I drank that much alcohol I would be puking. That is a lot of booze. On top of that, smoking pot in the car with all those little kids? </p>
<p>There is more to this story. A person doesn’t do something like this out of the blue.</p>
<p>How will her family move on from this? Just devastating.</p>
<p>My guess is her brother knew – when she called to say she wasnt feeling well, he knew exactly what that meant. </p>
<p>My heart goes out to all.</p>
<p>We here are guessing 1) argument with husband before he left, 2) possible deliberate suicide, and 3)yes, the brother had some idea.</p>
<p>We’d be thrilled to be wrong. Horrible. Horrible. Horrible.</p>
<p>I too couldn’t understand how this happened. I am familiar with this roadway and area. I also believed that the brother knew what was going on and yes, it crossed my mind that she might have had a fight with hubby.
This was so irresponsible.
This is tragic beyond belief. I’m somewhat close to this case in a peripheral kind of way and this was so tragic that the fire department and the ambulance crew had to have stress debriefing after this incident.
So many people affected and forever changed by a bad decision</p>
<p>The police in Westchester arrest people who have drunk and are parked on the shoulder. Just as I beg for an amesty for college kids who report problems, I beg for amnesty for people who pull over and park. Yes, they did wrong. But lets give them a way to avoid an accident. Who knows if the mom/brother were afaid to pull over. Peace.</p>
<p>The mystery as to why this woman drove the wrong way has been solved: She was drunk as a skunk and had been smoking reefer too. I believe that her alocolhol blood level was was something like 0.18, they found an empty bottle in the car, and also THC in her system. </p>
<p>What possessed her to do this with a car full of little kids we may never know. The family of the other car where three were killed are, according to news reports, considering a civil suit. </p>
<p>All in all, a really, really, sad case.</p>
<p>I just read that the driver also had additional undigested alcohol remaining in her stomach. As quickly as alcohol is absorbed through the stomach into the blood stream, this would seem to suggest that she might have been drinking WHILE driving as well. </p>
<p>I cannot imagine the pain her family is feeling. A lawyer for some of the other victims has just stated that they intend to file a lawsuit against the owner of the van, which would be the brother of the driver and the father of three of the dead children. I cannot imagine why the lawyer would need to make this announcement at this time given the fact that the brother has just lost all of this children, in addition to his sister and niece. Certainly if it turns out the brother knew his sister was impaired yet gave her the keys to his van, that might make a lawsuit understandable, but to announce this now before all the facts are known just seems unreasonably cruel.</p>
<p>What a tragedy.</p>
<p>I’m stunned that the other family wants to sue the man who lost his three daughters. I guess I shouldn’t be, as such vicious behavior is the logical outcome of our lawsuit mentality. To go after a grieving family in the hopes of cashing in on the deaths of their loved ones is beneath contempt. It won’t bring them back and it needlessly adds to the suffering of the survivors.</p>
<p>The woman who caused this accident is dead and her own family is suffering unimaginably. Perhaps her husband knew that she was drinking–but her brother? He was hours away at his home, and he told her to stop driving and wait for him when she called! Does the other victims’ family actually think that the brother would have knowingly allowed Schuler to drive drunk with his three little girls in the car?</p>
<p>Europa, many people use lawsuits as a vehicle for gaining information. The other families want to know what happened to their loved ones and this is probably the only way they will find out.</p>
<p>Well, if you say so, Zoosermom, I’ll believe you. I know that you work with lawyers so you have very good information about these things. The thought of the parents of the dead girls being attacked in a lawsuit really provoked an emotional response in me. I’m sure that they too want to know what happened. </p>
<p>This story is truly a nightmare…</p>
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<p>I read that they found a partially drunk bottle of Absolut Vodka (or the remains of it, I should say) at the accident scene. The whole thing is so very sad.</p>
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You have to remember they are also a grieving family. </p>
<p>We knew a family where their child was killed in a sad workplace accident and they sued the owners of the place where the accident happened. I think it was more about accountability and trying to just do something to make sense of their child’s death - they were utterly heartbroken. I was sad that they were doing it and it added another element of distress for us and an enormous amount of additional distress for my daughter (we were very fond of this boy who was my daughter’s first love and they both worked at the place he died). But I can somewhat understand why they did it.</p>
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<p>Of course it won’t bring them back, are you under the impression that is why they are considering a suit? I hardly think any of us are in a better position to decide what will will or will not add to the suffering of the survivors of the three men in the SUV.</p>
<p>As has been said, there is some information that can only be obtained in a lawsuit. It does not make sense at this point to assume that the woman had a drinking problem or that her family was enabling here but it also does not make sense to rule it out. </p>
<p>I’m just not going to judge any of the surviors. That actions taken by one may hurt another is unfortunate but that does not mean it’s wrong either.</p>
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<p>I disagree. It would be a rare case, indeed, where someone has a loved one killed in a car accident and who then makes the decision not to make a claim against the parties involved. While I was in grad school, I worked in the claims department of a large insurance co. and in all the years I worked there, I never once saw someone choose NOT to make a claim against the responsible parties. Not once. The way these suits work is that the driver and the owner are named. If the car is insured, it is the insurer who will handle the suit, generally speaking. There’s no reason for anyone to be judging the survivors, or not judging for that matter. This is how these things work. None of us know enough about the three men killed to know what their financial obligations may have been. I don’t anyway. If they had dependents, then, obviously, there are going to be claims made.</p>
<p>I do understand and sympathize with the other grieving family…but will a lawsuit bring back those men? What purpose does it serve? I will defer to Zoosermom; perhaps more details will come out in a court case than would have otherwise. That’s an area I know very little about, thank goodness.</p>
<p>But I do wonder about the point of “piling on” to a family who has also suffered horribly…three children under the age of ten…unimaginable. To be vindictive toward these people just because your own loved ones are dead…what is the point? It’s just me, but I don’t see how the ugliness of a lawsuit could ever make things right for the other victims’ family. And to exacerbate the misery of the girls’ family–just because the brother was the owner of the van–just seems…very immoral to me.</p>
<p>Even when the answers are revealed–if they ever are–the facts of the situation are the same: innocent people are dead and nothing will ever make it right.</p>
<p>pugmadkate, I meant the other survivors–the parents of the three dead girls. </p>
<p>And the only reason I am questioning this is because the responsible party–Diane Schuler–is dead. If she had somehow survived then of course I would understand going after her. By suing her brother, the van’s owner, it makes it seems as if HE is at fault–and I wonder how that could be? That’s why the lawsuit seem more unappetizing than most to me.</p>
<p>I get what a lot of you are saying about lawsuits and such. However, don’t the survivors have 2 years to file a lawsuit? My point is that it just doesn’t seem humane for the lawyer to publicly pile on the owner of the van who has just lost 3 children in this accident. Could the lawyer give it a month or so? If not, was it necessary to go to the press with these statements, or could he have quietly gone about the business of taking care of his grieving clients’ interests? Could this have been handled with a little more discretion and compassion towards ALL victims? </p>
<p>If my sister had just taken my car, killed herself, her child, three strangers, and ALL OF MY CHILDREN, I cannot imagine the agony of picking up a paper and reading inflammatory remarks by a lawyer implicating me with criminal and financial liability, making statements that I “HAD” to have known about the risk involved with giving her the keys, etc. It just seems to me that there could have been a better way to handle it.</p>
<p>I simply fail to see why your sympathy only extends towards one set of survivors. </p>
<p>It’s not vindictive nor “going after” anyone to seek to find out what happened and who is responsible. </p>
<p>Perhaps the only responsible party is dead but perhaps not. We simply have no way of knowing the history here. For example, what if the driver had a history of drunk driving or suicide attempts? </p>
<p>Nothing will ever make it right and, once again, no one thinks the dead will rise (I’ve never understood this arguement, it just seems silly.) However, suffering can be made worse when those left behind must also struggle financially. Those men had responsibilities, including financial ones. They were wrongly taken from their families. That the owner of the van also had his family wrongly taken from him does not negate that. </p>
<p>I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what the outcome will be. But I do know that I find it troublesome when it’s prematurely declared that one devestated family is acting in a way that is unappetizing.</p>
<p>Her husband called the police sometime after she left and two hours before the crash. Whatever he told them, they were actively looking for her car. There is more to this story.</p>