8 Die in Crash on Taconic State Parkway

[daisy7]

sudefed (sp)

I had no ideal they changed the law for id, i felt like a two bit criminal a year or so ago when i bought a pack.

they id you make you sign a paper they look at you strange. I havent bought none since.

I bought some primatene capsules the other day and they don't even have the package out in the aisle, you pick up a card and bring it to the register. Had to give them my DL (so the cashier could slide it) and I couldn't get it out of the darn plastic thing in my wallet. Finally, I did, but by then there was an impatient line behind me. They were probably all wondering what the heck is this lady buying?

 

[galvino]

Not my shining moment to admit this, but here goes....

I am an alcoholic who drinks mostly in private (b/c I CAN, and have no one to keep me accountable). I can drink a TRUCKLOAD of booze when I want to... but I can say, as crappy as my dependence on alcohol is, I know when to obstain. I know what it is like to sneak drinks, but I also know what it is to have responsibilities to others. I also try to put myself into other's shoes, but even this is BEYOND me!

As much as I drink, which can be alot, I am able to keep myself together. There is some thing wonky about this whole story that I can't figure out- I KNOW patterns of alcoholics because I am one, and this story (to this point) Is strange. There is something strange going on here.What is that twist?

 

[Native New Yorker]

I honestly feel that your garden variety alcoholic ( and I know several) would have paced themselves with the drinks....seems like SOMETHING happened, with those phone calls, and she snapped....and really starting binging after McDonalds...was furious at one point, driving recklessly.....and then calmly....

Also, if you had a loved one call you, and say they were having trouble driving, etc...would you JUST say ' stay there, I will come get you"....I know I would also call for help right away, not later on...( unless I wanted to try to get to them first, to hide something) I say her brother knew she was drunk, and he had known her to be drunk before......

 

[pudd]

Sorry to veer off on a tangent here, but that weekend wasn't a holiday weekend, was it? Just a regular 2 days? I can't for the life of me imagine driving 4 hours (there and 4 back!) for two days of camping with five kids and a dog. Not for fun, anyway! And they were leaving the campsite first thing Sunday morning, right? So, drive 8 hours to spend a day camping? I'm obviously not a camper so it all sounds ridiculous to me, but after a week at work I'd be more inclined to rest at home, especially given the three nieces were due at a rehearsal on the Sunday afternoon.

Does this kind of schedule make sense to any one?

 

[Bobbisangel]

Sorry to veer off on a tangent here, but that weekend wasn't a holiday weekend, was it? Just a regular 2 days? I can't for the life of me imagine driving 4 hours (there and 4 back!) for two days of camping with five kids and a dog. Not for fun, anyway! And they were leaving the campsite first thing Sunday morning, right? So, drive 8 hours to spend a day camping? I'm obviously not a camper so it all sounds ridiculous to me, but after a week at work I'd be more inclined to rest at home, especially given the three nieces were due at a rehearsal on the Sunday afternoon.

Does this kind of schedule make sense to any one?

I love to camp but I wouldn't drive those hours for one day and probably two nights of camping. From what the husband said though I think they went every weekend. They probably have a lot with a camper or something on it.
Four hours there and four back is a long time to have five kids cooped up in a vehicle. Mighty big of the husband to take the dog with him! Guess he was going fishing while mom drove home with all of the kids.

 

[tapu]

Not my shining moment to admit this, but here goes....

I am an alcoholic who drinks mostly in private (b/c I CAN, and have no one to keep me accountable). I can drink a TRUCKLOAD of booze when I want to... but I can say, as crappy as my dependence on alcohol is, I know when to obstain. I know what it is like to sneak drinks, but I also know what it is to have responsibilities to others. I also try to put myself into other's shoes, but even this is BEYOND me!

As much as I drink, which can be alot, I am able to keep myself together. There is some thing wonky about this whole story that I can't figure out- I KNOW patterns of alcoholics because I am one, and this story (to this point) Is strange. There is something strange going on here.What is that twist?

For me, the strange thing about alcohol is that you can't predict what will happen the next time; and the other strange thing is that the drinker so often thinks they can.

I wouldn't be surprised, if we could go back to that Sunday morning, if Diane Schuler wouldn't tell us she could drink a few and be fine on the drive back. She could "hold it together"--because she always had before.

I guess I'm saying, because I'm an alcoholic, I cannot drink safely. Whether it's this next time, or 10 times from now, somebody is going to pay for my hubris in thinking I had control.

 

[packerdog]

If indeed she had a tooth ache, I would think she would be transporting that bottle of advil back and forth instead of the vodka. You would also use advil for a hang over right? Even just a gas station would have those little packets of 2 aspirin, I would think.Maybe she did want to kill herself and take a whole bottle of them. Maybe she only had so much vodka in the bottle and she needed more to do herself in. I would also think that she would tell her husband that she was in pain. She could have asked one of friends/neighbors at the camp ground for OTC pain relief medication before she left. The bottom line is she was drunk, knew she had childen to care for, and drank to stupidity anyway.

 

[cloudajo]

Check out post #823 for an explanation of the blood test for pot. Sounds like she was using that AM.

Thanks. I also read this:

She also had "high levels" of THC in her system. THC is the active ingredient in marijuana. Westchester County's chief toxicologist, Elizabeth Spratt, said Schuler would have smoked marijuana as recently as 15 minutes prior to the crash. The Westchester medical examiner also said there was no THC in the children.

http://m.poughkeepsiejournal.com/ap...0090807/NEWS/908070335/-1/WAP&template=wapart

 

[angelmom]

Sorry to veer off on a tangent here, but that weekend wasn't a holiday weekend, was it? Just a regular 2 days? I can't for the life of me imagine driving 4 hours (there and 4 back!) for two days of camping with five kids and a dog. Not for fun, anyway! And they were leaving the campsite first thing Sunday morning, right? So, drive 8 hours to spend a day camping? I'm obviously not a camper so it all sounds ridiculous to me, but after a week at work I'd be more inclined to rest at home, especially given the three nieces were due at a rehearsal on the Sunday afternoon.

Does this kind of schedule make sense to any one?

I'm with you, but I will say I know families who do stuff like this all the time b/c it is "what they do." Friends who drive several hours to AL from ATL for a uncle's birthday party or cousin's wedding or friend's graduation. They are gone about every other weekend, leaving Saturday after the morning soccer games and coming back on Sunday evening. The kids are cranky and tired, and the mom always says, "We're not doing this anymore" but they still do b/c the dad's family makes such a big deal about family gatherings and he just can't say no to his own mother.

If it were something like that, where Daniel wanted to go and Dianne got stuck with the packing, food, kids, etc. I can see how it could have caused an argument and her being at the end of her rope. Not an excuse, but maybe a glimpse into her abnormal behavior.

I wonder if the big secret is not that she was a regular drunk, but that there have been times in the past where she has gotten angry and binged and acted aggressive or reckless.

 

[cloudajo]

This may have been posted before and I missed it, but I was curious as to how fast she was driving on the Taconic.

From what I read, Diane entered the parkway using an exit ramp in Briarcliff Manor, and then drove the minivan for 1.7 miles in the fast lane, at an estimated 65-70 mph, as oncoming cars honked, flashed their lights, and swerved out of her way. Just south of the Route 117 exit, she crashed head-on into the Chevy Trailblazer.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local...uler_told_brother_she_wasnt_feeling_well.html
http://m.nypost.com/ms/p/nyp/nyp/view.m?id=23570&storyid=181634

 

[cloudajo]

Interesting, Diane had been a nanny. Daniel's sister Jay and Diane were best friends. Not that it means anything much, but I wonder if the 12:08-12:10pm call to Diane's cell ("from a Schuler relative-not Daniel") was from Jay.

Jay Schuler, Daniel Schuler’s sister-in-law, who said she and Diane were “best friends,” said she never hesitated to leave her own child in Schuler’s care. Schuler had been a nanny before becoming an executive with Cablevision, she said.
​

http://www.longislandpress.com/2009/08/07/daniel-schuler-defends-wife-to-public/

 

[Intermezzo]

Thanks. I also read this:

She also had "high levels" of THC in her system. THC is the active ingredient in marijuana. Westchester County's chief toxicologist, Elizabeth Spratt, said Schuler would have smoked marijuana as recently as 15 minutes prior to the crash. The Westchester medical examiner also said there was no THC in the children.

http://m.poughkeepsiejournal.com/ap...0090807/NEWS/908070335/-1/WAP&template=wapart

I have a question to ask.
If no THC was found in the children does that indicate Diane smoked pot outside of the vehicle (such as at the rest stop possibly around the last time she spoke with her brother), and not in an enclosed space like the van?

 

[Intermezzo]

Do we know for certain if Diane got any OTC medication?
Does the Tox report show any OTC in her system

Theorizing,If the bottles of Advil/Tylenol were out of stock or whatever the reason....perhaps she purchased 1 or 2 travel size packets of Advil/Tylenol etc... And if she did, she may have combined the OTC with her Alcohol and Pot.

 

[cloudajo]

I have a question to ask.
If no THC was found in the children does that indicate Diane smoked pot outside of the vehicle (such as at the rest stop possibly around the last time she spoke with her brother), and not in an enclosed space like the van?

That's what I think may have happened. I think perhaps she stopped at the pull off after Tappen Zee, got out of the vehicle to smoke a joint, and that is when Emma used her phone to call her father because she was scared. Just speculation on my part.

 

[tapu]

I can kind of see this possible scenario, whether Diane was an alcoholic, or not:


She has tooth pain. She goes for analgesics. Whether she gets them or not, she decides, "Hey, I've got the vodka packed back there. I'll just take a few swigs of that and I'll be pain-free, able to get these kids back home."

Now, at this point, the cunning nature of alcohol takes over.* She ends up swigging more and more, and driving aggressively after a while. Next, pulls over and calls her brother because she knows she's messed up, and smokes some pot she also has packed in there, thinking maybe it will offset the alcohol. (That's how you can get to thinking on alcohol.)

Then she says, "oh, hell, I'm fine, I can just drive. He doesn't have to come up here and that would be humiliating anyway." In alcohol-and-pot-induced confusion, she goes up the wrong ramp. When other cars start honking and swerving, she knows something is wrong but maybe doesn't know what is wrong or can't reason enough to pull over. Instead, she "hunkers down" in [her] slow lane and drives as straight and true as she can until....



* Example of how this has happened to me: I used to tell myself that when I had three limes in the bottom of my glass that I would stop drinking those gin and tonics because I knew that three was my "limit." But more often than not, I'd look down in that glass and suddenly there were like 8 or 9 limes in there! Gee, how'd that happen??

 

[southcitymom]

Not my shining moment to admit this, but here goes....

I am an alcoholic who drinks mostly in private (b/c I CAN, and have no one to keep me accountable). I can drink a TRUCKLOAD of booze when I want to... but I can say, as crappy as my dependence on alcohol is, I know when to obstain. I know what it is like to sneak drinks, but I also know what it is to have responsibilities to others. I also try to put myself into other's shoes, but even this is BEYOND me!

As much as I drink, which can be alot, I am able to keep myself together. There is some thing wonky about this whole story that I can't figure out- I KNOW patterns of alcoholics because I am one, and this story (to this point) Is strange. There is something strange going on here.What is that twist?

Alcoholics have different patterns. I have been "openly" addicted and "secretly" addicted, so I have some experience with both.

When you don't want people to know you are using, you use alone or around small children and animals.

This woman's story is not strange to me. I have used and driven small children all over the place. There where times during that period of my life when I had to pull over on the side of interstates and get out of my car and throw up - with young children strapped into the back and traffic speeding by.

At the same time, I felt like I was being completely responsible. My children were always fed, bathed, taken to the doctor, etc....they were the center of my world and my days revolved around what needed to be done for them. Still, my days always involved using because that's what I did and I needed what I needed in order to function.

I very much understand that many people cannot fathom the choice this woman made because they have never been in her shoes. But please believe me when I tell you that "drinking and parenting" is very very common. I have lived Diane Shuler's story and talked to countless more parents who have lived it as well.

 

[Native New Yorker]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/15/nyregion/15taconic.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion

"Ms. Schuler’s husband, Daniel, his lawyer and a private investigator met the police at their headquarters in Hawthorne, N.Y., to try to build a timeline of the events before the crash, on July 26, said the private investigator, Tom Ruskin"

snip

"Mr. Ruskin said the focus has narrowed to a 48-minute gap, from the time Ms. Schuler spoke to the family of her brother, Warren Hance, until about 12:58 p.m., when she reached the vicinity of the Tappan Zee Bridge sounding “disoriented.”

 

[tapu]

Drinking straight out of a bottle, while a little tough to... stomach... for most, could be how she managed to ingest such an amount, unknowingly, in such a short time....

 

[zippitydoda]

I wholey believe there is much more to the reason why she drank this much, on this day, during this time.

I hope that these answers are provided to the victim’s family through the civil suit. I don’t think they will get anything out of Mr. Shuler unless he's compelled, and I think he'll continue to be evasive, but perhaps someone else within that family will tell the truth.

 

[arielilane]

While many cannot fathom DS’s choices it is our right to speak up and not defend her behavior. Many have and have not walked in those shoes. Some people just don’t want to put their life experiences out there on the Internet.

Many have lived DS’s life…many come from addictive families. Unfortunately it is all too common for drinking and parenting. I see it all the time. These people revolve everything around drinking or smoking or whatever…before anything else. Their children’s needs are second or third. The next high is the main focus.

Everything happens for a reason…There is something to be learned from this tragedy and making up excuses and the family not being truthful is not going to help us all learn and grow from this. The family (DS’s husband) needs to come clean.