Post by mumbles181 on Sept 16, 2008 7:06:13 GMT -5
I wasn't sure where to put this, the title is for firefighters, however EVERYONE should read it. It's a long read, but very informative. Unfortunatly it comes a coulpe of days late for this years convention:
Volunteer firefighter Shannon Halvorson in full gear a few months before her death in 2003.
www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2008/08/death_of_a_firefighter_part_1.html
Death of a Firefighter -- Part 1 in an editorial series
By The Oregonian Editorial Board
Saturday August 23, 2008, 11:19 AM
In February 2003, Shannon Halvorson was a certified medical assistant working at a Prineville clinic. She later became a volunteer firefighter with Crook County Fire & Rescue. Shannon Halvorson's fellow volunteer firefighters killed her.
They didn't mean to, but they killed her just the same. During a night of rowdy partying at an Albany motel five years ago, they got the underage woman so dangerously intoxicated she should have been hospitalized.
Instead, two inebriated male colleagues removed her from the party, according to police reports. She died as a result, and her grieving father has been fighting ever since for some measure of justice for the young son she left behind.
It's a disturbing story that says much about the exalted status of firefighters and a community's eagerness to close ranks around them. In America, firefighters are heroes, and deservedly so, but police reports and other public records indicate there were no heroes in the chaotic final hours of Shannon Halvorson's life.
In the spring of 2003, Halvorson was a 20-year-old volunteer with Crook County Fire & Rescue in Prineville. She was a vivacious, hard-driving survivor of a teenage pregnancy and a high school marriage that fell apart. Despite obstacles, she got her high school degree, graduated at the top of her community college class, became an emergency medical technician and firefighter and won admittance to a training program to advance her goal of becoming a registered flight nurse.
She received that welcome news on June 12, 2003, while in Albany for training at a conference of the Oregon Volunteer Firefighters Association. She shared a room there at the Comfort Suites with the wife of a Crook County division chief, who did not attend.
Late that evening, while the chief's wife went to bed, Halvorson took a dip in the motel pool. There, another firefighter joined her, shared wine with her and eventually invited her to go with him to a late-night party in the association president's suite next door at the Holiday Inn.
Witnesses said Halvorson appeared fine when she arrived at the hospitality suite, Room 209, just after 11 p.m. Two to three dozen firefighters, most of them men in their 30s and 40s, were there, and the liquor was flowing.
At the door, Halvorson was handed a 1.5-liter bottle of Captain Morgan spiced rum and told to drink from it as a requirement for entry. Reports say no one questioned whether she was of legal drinking age.
The moment she stepped into the room, other firefighters gave her at least two cans of beer and coaxed her to drink from open bottles of tequila, bourbon and rum. Witnesses told police she was soon chugging from a 1.5-liter jug of Jack Daniel's as men chanted "Go, go, go."
By 11:45 p.m. she was fading in and out of consciousness, showing symptoms of alcohol poisoning, according to paramedics and EMTs who were at the party. No one called 9-1-1 -- not, at least, in time to save her.
Reports show one EMT did argue that she should be taken to a hospital. He nearly came to blows with two intoxicated Prineville firefighters who wanted to remove her from the room instead.
They carried the unconscious woman out a side door, avoiding the lobby. Outside, one of the men flopped her limp body over his shoulder and began staggering across a parking lot toward their rooms at the Comfort Suites.
Minutes later, Shannon Halvorson's fellow firefighters finally called 9-1-1. By then, it was grotesquely too late.
Every good paramedic knows the symptoms of alcohol poisoning,
and Shannon Halvorson exhibited most of them on that deadly night in 2003. Police reports show she was incoherent and listless.
She could no longer walk.
She was nauseous and vomiting.
She was fading in and out of consciousness.
Among many troubling aspects of Halvorson's death is the fact that symptoms of her alcohol poisoning were so obvious in a motel party suite filled with paramedics and EMTs, yet none of them summoned medical help or took her to a hospital. Instead, two male firefighters tried to take her someplace else -- to sleep it off, they told police -- but she never got there.
More than 300 pages of police reports and other public records tell an appalling story of what happened to Halvorson that night of June 12, 2003.
As a crowd of men egged her on, the 20-year-old Prineville firefighter became dangerously intoxicated in a Holiday Inn hospitality suite during an Oregon Volunteer Firefighters Association conference in Albany.
Just before midnight, according to police reports, Prineville firefighters Mark McCallum, 42, and Tony McGarvey, 37, carried the young woman outside. There, McGarvey said he was too tired to carry her any farther, so McCallum lifted her in a "fireman's carry," over his shoulder, and stumbled toward the Comfort Suites next door where the Prineville volunteers had rooms.
McCallum tripped in the parking lot and fell forward. This caused
Halvorson's limp body to catapult violently forward. The back of her head hit the pavement with a sickening sound that witnesses likened to a bat smacking a ball.
Blood poured from her ears and nose. Other firefighters came running and scrambled to keep her breathing while an ambulance was summoned.
She died of the massive skull fracture about 12 hours later at a Corvallis hospital. Her blood alcohol level was measured at .22percent, nearly three times the legal driving limit of .08 percent and an especially dangerous level for a petite young woman like Halvorson.
McCallum's blood alcohol level tested at .18 percent, more than twice the legal limit for motorists in Oregon. McGarvey wasn't tested but he, like McCallum, couldn't remember all that happened during and after the party, reports said.
"Subjects in the area were drunk," wrote the first Albany police officer to arrive.
Yet no charges of negligence were brought in the case. Nor was anyone even charged with furnishing alcohol to a minor. Halvorson's father, Dick Zimmerlee of Bend, has been fighting ever since to bring attention to what he saw as a sympathetic circling of the wagons around the state firefighters association.
Zimmerlee has a compelling case, and the most haunting piece of it is what didn't happen that boozy night at a party packed with paramedics and EMTs who failed Shannon Halvorson.
This is the third installment in an editorial series about the accidental death of an underage volunteer firefighter at the hands of fellow firefighters. They got 20-year-old Shannon Halvorson dangerously intoxicated at a motel party in Albany, she ended up dead and her grieving father has been fighting for five years for some accountability in the case.
Dick Zimmerlee fervently believes that volunteer firefighters, aided by a soft and sympathetic investigation by law enforcement, tried to whitewash details of the 2003 death of his daughter, Shannon Halvorson.
"It never smelled right," he says.
It does appear that Halvorson's fellow firefighters tried, at least
initially, to soft-pedal what happened to her on June 12, 2003, during a wild night of hard partying at a Linn County motel. The day after that party, 14 hours after she was fatally injured there, Crook County Fire & Rescue put out a news release containing a highly misleading account of the incident:
"Shannon Halvorson, 20, a new volunteer with the department, was attending the Oregon Volunteer Firefighters Association conference in Albany, Oregon, when she became the victim of a fall. Shannon was returning to her motel with fellow firefighters late last night when she apparently fell, struck her head and was seriously injured."
She "apparently fell"? That was not true, and it's completely implausible that fire officials didn't know it at that hour after a long night of interviewing those involved.
Hours earlier they had talked to witnesses and the drunken firefighter who did fall, a 42-year-old Prineville man who tried to carry the unconscious, dangerously intoxicated young woman across a parking lot. He stumbled, whipping her limp body violently onto the pavement.
She suffered a skull fracture and died 12 hours later. Two hours after that, the misleading release was issued, which led to misleading initial news reports.
The truth eventually came out, but Zimmerlee is justifiably bitter. Police reports suggest efforts were made to obfuscate the the full extent of the drinking that went on in Room 209, a hospitality suite used by the firefighters at Albany's Holiday Inn.
Detectives who went to the room a few hours after the party said it smelled like stale beer. "Trash and food particles" covered the floor and the bathroom "was a mess," they wrote in a report, but they saw no sign of alcoholic beverages. Outside in trash bins, however, they seized 188 liquor, wine and beer containers. Many were unopened or only partially consumed, a sign of hasty disposal, the report said.
The suite's occupant, Dave Lapof, 48, then-president of the state
firefighters organization, told investigators he had no idea who cleaned up the room. He also told them it had been a no-host party in which firefighters brought their own booze.
Witnesses unaffiliated with the firefighters told police they saw a large cart loaded with liquor and mixers being delivered to Room 209 earlier in the day. Police reports do not say who delivered the stock of liquor or whether any attempt was made to find out.
To Dick Zimmerlee, that was damning.
"If you served alcohol like that at a bar or a party in your home, and somebody got killed as a result, you would likely be accused of criminal negligence," he says, and a lot of prosecutors would agree.
But no one faced charges in the Albany party, not even for furnishing alcohol to a minor. Zimmerlee makes a compelling argument that the Oregon Volunteer Firefighters Association succeeded in ducking responsibility for his daughter's death.
This is the fourth installment in an editorial series about the accidental death of an underage volunteer firefighter at the hands of fellow firefighters. They got 20-year-old Shannon Halvorson dangerously intoxicated at a motel party in Albany, she ended up dead and her grieving father has been fighting five years for some accountability in the case.
In the anguished hours after Shannon Halvorson died, rumors and haunting questions spread like flames among her fellow volunteer firefighters.
How did she become incapacitated so quickly at that rowdy motel-room party? What were the intentions of the men who coaxed her to drink? Was she slipped a drug as well?
Robin McKnight, an Albany police detective, wanted to know, too. As leader of the investigation into her mortal injury at a wild party for volunteer firefighters on June 12, 2003, he called the hospital where she lay dying the next morning and wrote this in his report:
"I explained the seriousness of this investigation and requested there be blood and urine drawn for law enforcement purposes and also drawn to be tested for any type of controlled substances and any date rape drugs."
Halvorson, 20, began fading in and out of consciousness within 40 minutes of arriving at the late-night party. An inebriated male colleague, trying to carry her away from the party, stumbled in the parking lot, whipping her body forward onto the pavement so forcefully she suffered a fatal skull fracture.
Police reports quote witnesses at the party who suspected a certain firefighter -- not among her fellow volunteers from Crook County -- of trying to get her drunk for sex. When officers questioned the man about that, he acknowledged giving her a beer and egging her to chug whiskey from a bottle, but he denied sexual intentions.
"I'll admit she's an attractive girl," he told investigators. "I had my
thoughts, but I wouldn't do anything."
You can't blame Halvorson's father, Dick Zimmerlee, for being suspicious of those reports. Especially after a private detective, hired for a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of Halvorson's surviving son, interviewed one firefighter who said in a civil affidavit that he had been told that the date rape drug Rohypnol was present at the party and that he was convinced he had ingested some of it.
It may well be that Halvorson, a petite young woman, drank so much so fast, as men chanted "go, go, go," that she passed out as quickly as she did. Nonetheless, the Albany detective, McKnight, correctly saw that the possibility of criminal drugging had to be investigated.
Yet Zimmerlee was rebuffed every time he asked to see the crime lab report on his daughter's blood. In the hospital toxicology examination, based on procedures not designed to meet legal forensic standards, she tested negative for controlled substances like marijuana and cocaine, but she was not tested at the hospital for date-rape drugs. That's the state crime lab's job.
McKnight, the lead investigator, wrote in a report that he put three vials of Halvorson's blood in a refrigerated evidence locker. So where's the crime lab report and what did it say?
George Eder, the Linn County deputy district attorney who handled the Halvorson case, told The Oregonian on Aug. 11 he couldn't recall what the tests turned up. We requested a copy of the test results, and Eder responded two days later with a terse letter saying "the samples were not submitted to a laboratory for analysis."
Like the grieving father, we're still waiting for an explanation.
This is the fifth installment in an editorial series about the accidental death of an underage volunteer firefighter at the hands of fellow firefighters. They got 20-year-old Shannon Halvorson dangerously intoxicated at a motel party in Albany, she ended up dead and her grieving father has been fighting five years for some accountability in the case.
The U.S. Justice Department should investigate the death of Prineville volunteer firefighter Shannon Halvorson.
Did her fellow volunteers conceal details of the out-of-control party where she was fatally injured? Who supplied alcohol to the underage woman?
Why weren't her blood samples sent to the state crime lab for date-rape drug testing? Did local authorities pursue the case vigorously or give the firefighters a sympathetic pass? Were Halvorson's civil rights violated?
Five years after her death, those questions still hang in the air like
smoke. The case needs a fresh look by investigators from outside Linn County.
Yes, it's true that the 20-year-old woman bore some responsibility. She a minor and shouldn't have gone to the boozy party at an Albany motel suite during a state firefighters conference in 2003.
Nor should she have taken a swig of rum from the bottle that was handed to her at the doorway as a requirement for entering. That was her decision, and it was a dreadful mistake.
But at some point soon after that, as firefighters chanting "go, go, go" egged her on while she chugged liquor from open bottles, the responsibility for her safety shifted.
Several men in the room told police the scene made them uneasy. Among them was the party host, Dave Lapof, 48, state president of the volunteer firefighters association, who saw something wrong: "People trying to get a young girl drunk," he told police.
In a hospitality suite packed with paramedics and EMTs, intervention by just one person might have averted her death. Several partygoers told police she showed obvious signs of alcohol poisoning, but no one sought medical attention for her, and after she lost consciousness no one stood in the way when two inebriated firemen carried her away from the party.
Outside, one of the men hoisted her limp body over his shoulder, then tripped as he ran across a parking lot, pitching her head-first onto the pavement. She died 12 hours later of a massive head injury.
A grand jury found that no crime had been committed. Jurors told reporters that the district attorney's office had appeared to seek that finding.
But how could the volunteer firefighters be deemed not negligent when they furnished alcohol to a minor and encouraged her to drink until she should have been hospitalized? How were they not responsible for the accident that killed her?
On behalf of Halvorson's little boy, who was 3 at the time, a wrongful death suit was filed against the state volunteers association and Lapof, its president, as well as Crook County Fire & Rescue and the volunteer who accidentally slammed her to the pavement. Firefighters, however, are protected from large tort claims, and the suit was settled for a pittance.
The state association took up a collection and made a modest contribution to the boy's father, who has custody. The group owes the boy a lot more than that, and it owes her grieving family the formal apology they never received.
The group also must permanently end the alcohol abuse that's been notoriously out of control at its state conferences for years.
In America, firefighters are heroes, and more so than ever since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But on that night of deadly revelry in Albany, when Shannon Halvorson desperately needed a hero, there wasn't one in sight.
Her case should be reopened.
Volunteer firefighter Shannon Halvorson in full gear a few months before her death in 2003.
www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2008/08/death_of_a_firefighter_part_1.html
Death of a Firefighter -- Part 1 in an editorial series
By The Oregonian Editorial Board
Saturday August 23, 2008, 11:19 AM
In February 2003, Shannon Halvorson was a certified medical assistant working at a Prineville clinic. She later became a volunteer firefighter with Crook County Fire & Rescue. Shannon Halvorson's fellow volunteer firefighters killed her.
They didn't mean to, but they killed her just the same. During a night of rowdy partying at an Albany motel five years ago, they got the underage woman so dangerously intoxicated she should have been hospitalized.
Instead, two inebriated male colleagues removed her from the party, according to police reports. She died as a result, and her grieving father has been fighting ever since for some measure of justice for the young son she left behind.
It's a disturbing story that says much about the exalted status of firefighters and a community's eagerness to close ranks around them. In America, firefighters are heroes, and deservedly so, but police reports and other public records indicate there were no heroes in the chaotic final hours of Shannon Halvorson's life.
In the spring of 2003, Halvorson was a 20-year-old volunteer with Crook County Fire & Rescue in Prineville. She was a vivacious, hard-driving survivor of a teenage pregnancy and a high school marriage that fell apart. Despite obstacles, she got her high school degree, graduated at the top of her community college class, became an emergency medical technician and firefighter and won admittance to a training program to advance her goal of becoming a registered flight nurse.
She received that welcome news on June 12, 2003, while in Albany for training at a conference of the Oregon Volunteer Firefighters Association. She shared a room there at the Comfort Suites with the wife of a Crook County division chief, who did not attend.
Late that evening, while the chief's wife went to bed, Halvorson took a dip in the motel pool. There, another firefighter joined her, shared wine with her and eventually invited her to go with him to a late-night party in the association president's suite next door at the Holiday Inn.
Witnesses said Halvorson appeared fine when she arrived at the hospitality suite, Room 209, just after 11 p.m. Two to three dozen firefighters, most of them men in their 30s and 40s, were there, and the liquor was flowing.
At the door, Halvorson was handed a 1.5-liter bottle of Captain Morgan spiced rum and told to drink from it as a requirement for entry. Reports say no one questioned whether she was of legal drinking age.
The moment she stepped into the room, other firefighters gave her at least two cans of beer and coaxed her to drink from open bottles of tequila, bourbon and rum. Witnesses told police she was soon chugging from a 1.5-liter jug of Jack Daniel's as men chanted "Go, go, go."
By 11:45 p.m. she was fading in and out of consciousness, showing symptoms of alcohol poisoning, according to paramedics and EMTs who were at the party. No one called 9-1-1 -- not, at least, in time to save her.
Reports show one EMT did argue that she should be taken to a hospital. He nearly came to blows with two intoxicated Prineville firefighters who wanted to remove her from the room instead.
They carried the unconscious woman out a side door, avoiding the lobby. Outside, one of the men flopped her limp body over his shoulder and began staggering across a parking lot toward their rooms at the Comfort Suites.
Minutes later, Shannon Halvorson's fellow firefighters finally called 9-1-1. By then, it was grotesquely too late.
Every good paramedic knows the symptoms of alcohol poisoning,
and Shannon Halvorson exhibited most of them on that deadly night in 2003. Police reports show she was incoherent and listless.
She could no longer walk.
She was nauseous and vomiting.
She was fading in and out of consciousness.
Among many troubling aspects of Halvorson's death is the fact that symptoms of her alcohol poisoning were so obvious in a motel party suite filled with paramedics and EMTs, yet none of them summoned medical help or took her to a hospital. Instead, two male firefighters tried to take her someplace else -- to sleep it off, they told police -- but she never got there.
More than 300 pages of police reports and other public records tell an appalling story of what happened to Halvorson that night of June 12, 2003.
As a crowd of men egged her on, the 20-year-old Prineville firefighter became dangerously intoxicated in a Holiday Inn hospitality suite during an Oregon Volunteer Firefighters Association conference in Albany.
Just before midnight, according to police reports, Prineville firefighters Mark McCallum, 42, and Tony McGarvey, 37, carried the young woman outside. There, McGarvey said he was too tired to carry her any farther, so McCallum lifted her in a "fireman's carry," over his shoulder, and stumbled toward the Comfort Suites next door where the Prineville volunteers had rooms.
McCallum tripped in the parking lot and fell forward. This caused
Halvorson's limp body to catapult violently forward. The back of her head hit the pavement with a sickening sound that witnesses likened to a bat smacking a ball.
Blood poured from her ears and nose. Other firefighters came running and scrambled to keep her breathing while an ambulance was summoned.
She died of the massive skull fracture about 12 hours later at a Corvallis hospital. Her blood alcohol level was measured at .22percent, nearly three times the legal driving limit of .08 percent and an especially dangerous level for a petite young woman like Halvorson.
McCallum's blood alcohol level tested at .18 percent, more than twice the legal limit for motorists in Oregon. McGarvey wasn't tested but he, like McCallum, couldn't remember all that happened during and after the party, reports said.
"Subjects in the area were drunk," wrote the first Albany police officer to arrive.
Yet no charges of negligence were brought in the case. Nor was anyone even charged with furnishing alcohol to a minor. Halvorson's father, Dick Zimmerlee of Bend, has been fighting ever since to bring attention to what he saw as a sympathetic circling of the wagons around the state firefighters association.
Zimmerlee has a compelling case, and the most haunting piece of it is what didn't happen that boozy night at a party packed with paramedics and EMTs who failed Shannon Halvorson.
This is the third installment in an editorial series about the accidental death of an underage volunteer firefighter at the hands of fellow firefighters. They got 20-year-old Shannon Halvorson dangerously intoxicated at a motel party in Albany, she ended up dead and her grieving father has been fighting for five years for some accountability in the case.
Dick Zimmerlee fervently believes that volunteer firefighters, aided by a soft and sympathetic investigation by law enforcement, tried to whitewash details of the 2003 death of his daughter, Shannon Halvorson.
"It never smelled right," he says.
It does appear that Halvorson's fellow firefighters tried, at least
initially, to soft-pedal what happened to her on June 12, 2003, during a wild night of hard partying at a Linn County motel. The day after that party, 14 hours after she was fatally injured there, Crook County Fire & Rescue put out a news release containing a highly misleading account of the incident:
"Shannon Halvorson, 20, a new volunteer with the department, was attending the Oregon Volunteer Firefighters Association conference in Albany, Oregon, when she became the victim of a fall. Shannon was returning to her motel with fellow firefighters late last night when she apparently fell, struck her head and was seriously injured."
She "apparently fell"? That was not true, and it's completely implausible that fire officials didn't know it at that hour after a long night of interviewing those involved.
Hours earlier they had talked to witnesses and the drunken firefighter who did fall, a 42-year-old Prineville man who tried to carry the unconscious, dangerously intoxicated young woman across a parking lot. He stumbled, whipping her limp body violently onto the pavement.
She suffered a skull fracture and died 12 hours later. Two hours after that, the misleading release was issued, which led to misleading initial news reports.
The truth eventually came out, but Zimmerlee is justifiably bitter. Police reports suggest efforts were made to obfuscate the the full extent of the drinking that went on in Room 209, a hospitality suite used by the firefighters at Albany's Holiday Inn.
Detectives who went to the room a few hours after the party said it smelled like stale beer. "Trash and food particles" covered the floor and the bathroom "was a mess," they wrote in a report, but they saw no sign of alcoholic beverages. Outside in trash bins, however, they seized 188 liquor, wine and beer containers. Many were unopened or only partially consumed, a sign of hasty disposal, the report said.
The suite's occupant, Dave Lapof, 48, then-president of the state
firefighters organization, told investigators he had no idea who cleaned up the room. He also told them it had been a no-host party in which firefighters brought their own booze.
Witnesses unaffiliated with the firefighters told police they saw a large cart loaded with liquor and mixers being delivered to Room 209 earlier in the day. Police reports do not say who delivered the stock of liquor or whether any attempt was made to find out.
To Dick Zimmerlee, that was damning.
"If you served alcohol like that at a bar or a party in your home, and somebody got killed as a result, you would likely be accused of criminal negligence," he says, and a lot of prosecutors would agree.
But no one faced charges in the Albany party, not even for furnishing alcohol to a minor. Zimmerlee makes a compelling argument that the Oregon Volunteer Firefighters Association succeeded in ducking responsibility for his daughter's death.
This is the fourth installment in an editorial series about the accidental death of an underage volunteer firefighter at the hands of fellow firefighters. They got 20-year-old Shannon Halvorson dangerously intoxicated at a motel party in Albany, she ended up dead and her grieving father has been fighting five years for some accountability in the case.
In the anguished hours after Shannon Halvorson died, rumors and haunting questions spread like flames among her fellow volunteer firefighters.
How did she become incapacitated so quickly at that rowdy motel-room party? What were the intentions of the men who coaxed her to drink? Was she slipped a drug as well?
Robin McKnight, an Albany police detective, wanted to know, too. As leader of the investigation into her mortal injury at a wild party for volunteer firefighters on June 12, 2003, he called the hospital where she lay dying the next morning and wrote this in his report:
"I explained the seriousness of this investigation and requested there be blood and urine drawn for law enforcement purposes and also drawn to be tested for any type of controlled substances and any date rape drugs."
Halvorson, 20, began fading in and out of consciousness within 40 minutes of arriving at the late-night party. An inebriated male colleague, trying to carry her away from the party, stumbled in the parking lot, whipping her body forward onto the pavement so forcefully she suffered a fatal skull fracture.
Police reports quote witnesses at the party who suspected a certain firefighter -- not among her fellow volunteers from Crook County -- of trying to get her drunk for sex. When officers questioned the man about that, he acknowledged giving her a beer and egging her to chug whiskey from a bottle, but he denied sexual intentions.
"I'll admit she's an attractive girl," he told investigators. "I had my
thoughts, but I wouldn't do anything."
You can't blame Halvorson's father, Dick Zimmerlee, for being suspicious of those reports. Especially after a private detective, hired for a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of Halvorson's surviving son, interviewed one firefighter who said in a civil affidavit that he had been told that the date rape drug Rohypnol was present at the party and that he was convinced he had ingested some of it.
It may well be that Halvorson, a petite young woman, drank so much so fast, as men chanted "go, go, go," that she passed out as quickly as she did. Nonetheless, the Albany detective, McKnight, correctly saw that the possibility of criminal drugging had to be investigated.
Yet Zimmerlee was rebuffed every time he asked to see the crime lab report on his daughter's blood. In the hospital toxicology examination, based on procedures not designed to meet legal forensic standards, she tested negative for controlled substances like marijuana and cocaine, but she was not tested at the hospital for date-rape drugs. That's the state crime lab's job.
McKnight, the lead investigator, wrote in a report that he put three vials of Halvorson's blood in a refrigerated evidence locker. So where's the crime lab report and what did it say?
George Eder, the Linn County deputy district attorney who handled the Halvorson case, told The Oregonian on Aug. 11 he couldn't recall what the tests turned up. We requested a copy of the test results, and Eder responded two days later with a terse letter saying "the samples were not submitted to a laboratory for analysis."
Like the grieving father, we're still waiting for an explanation.
This is the fifth installment in an editorial series about the accidental death of an underage volunteer firefighter at the hands of fellow firefighters. They got 20-year-old Shannon Halvorson dangerously intoxicated at a motel party in Albany, she ended up dead and her grieving father has been fighting five years for some accountability in the case.
The U.S. Justice Department should investigate the death of Prineville volunteer firefighter Shannon Halvorson.
Did her fellow volunteers conceal details of the out-of-control party where she was fatally injured? Who supplied alcohol to the underage woman?
Why weren't her blood samples sent to the state crime lab for date-rape drug testing? Did local authorities pursue the case vigorously or give the firefighters a sympathetic pass? Were Halvorson's civil rights violated?
Five years after her death, those questions still hang in the air like
smoke. The case needs a fresh look by investigators from outside Linn County.
Yes, it's true that the 20-year-old woman bore some responsibility. She a minor and shouldn't have gone to the boozy party at an Albany motel suite during a state firefighters conference in 2003.
Nor should she have taken a swig of rum from the bottle that was handed to her at the doorway as a requirement for entering. That was her decision, and it was a dreadful mistake.
But at some point soon after that, as firefighters chanting "go, go, go" egged her on while she chugged liquor from open bottles, the responsibility for her safety shifted.
Several men in the room told police the scene made them uneasy. Among them was the party host, Dave Lapof, 48, state president of the volunteer firefighters association, who saw something wrong: "People trying to get a young girl drunk," he told police.
In a hospitality suite packed with paramedics and EMTs, intervention by just one person might have averted her death. Several partygoers told police she showed obvious signs of alcohol poisoning, but no one sought medical attention for her, and after she lost consciousness no one stood in the way when two inebriated firemen carried her away from the party.
Outside, one of the men hoisted her limp body over his shoulder, then tripped as he ran across a parking lot, pitching her head-first onto the pavement. She died 12 hours later of a massive head injury.
A grand jury found that no crime had been committed. Jurors told reporters that the district attorney's office had appeared to seek that finding.
But how could the volunteer firefighters be deemed not negligent when they furnished alcohol to a minor and encouraged her to drink until she should have been hospitalized? How were they not responsible for the accident that killed her?
On behalf of Halvorson's little boy, who was 3 at the time, a wrongful death suit was filed against the state volunteers association and Lapof, its president, as well as Crook County Fire & Rescue and the volunteer who accidentally slammed her to the pavement. Firefighters, however, are protected from large tort claims, and the suit was settled for a pittance.
The state association took up a collection and made a modest contribution to the boy's father, who has custody. The group owes the boy a lot more than that, and it owes her grieving family the formal apology they never received.
The group also must permanently end the alcohol abuse that's been notoriously out of control at its state conferences for years.
In America, firefighters are heroes, and more so than ever since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But on that night of deadly revelry in Albany, when Shannon Halvorson desperately needed a hero, there wasn't one in sight.
Her case should be reopened.
