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August 2, 2008

Coroner asks: Was alcohol involved?

BY BEN JONES
POST-CRESCENT MADISON BUREAU CHIEF

MADISON — After every fatal car crash, needle meets flesh. By law, Wisconsin coroners test the blood of every driver killed to answer one last question.

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Was alcohol involved?

The grim procedure is all-too common in Wisconsin. Crashes occur in every corner of the state, and they kill people nearly every day. From July 6, when Gannett Wisconsin Media’s State of Drinking series began, to July 29 — near the end of the series — 43 people have died in 41 accidents on Wisconsin roads.

In order to learn more about the scope of the human toll, Gannett Wisconsin newspapers used state electronic databases, paper police records, obituaries and other sources to document the more than 200 people killed last year in drunken driving crashes.

The information includes photos and biographical information for people all over the state. It also includes details about the drivers, including how much alcohol was involved.

After crashes such as these, a somber routine begins. In Outagamie County, it starts with Coroner Ruth Wulgaert, who draws samples of vitreous fluids from eyes that can no longer see. Wulgaert also collects samples of blood and urine.

She encases the samples in tubes and sends them to a lab for alcohol and drug testing. Wulgaert awaits the results, which she will record on a form that she will send to the state.

It’s a routine task that’s part of the aftermath of every fatal drunken driving crash. It’s not the most difficult part of Wulgaert’s job.

When people die in car crashes, Wulgaert drives to the homes of their families. She tells them what happened, a job she has been doing for more than 20 years.

“Does one get easier than another?” she said. “Absolutely not.”

Wulgaert said there’s one question families always ask.

“Was alcohol involved?”

Big loss, small details

Last year, 337 people were killed in about 300 alcohol-related accidents, according to a Gannett Wisconsin analysis. At least 208 of those crashes involved drivers who were legally drunk. In those crashes, some 234 people were killed, including children, young adults, mothers, fathers, and grandparents.

Many of the victims died alone. Often the person who was killed was the drunken driver. But sometimes the victim was just in the path of someone who should not have been driving.

One such victim, Jesus Manuel Quirios-Castillo, died asleep in bed. A drunken driver crashed through his hotel room wall.

Can small details help measure a big loss?

If so, it’s worth mentioning that Joshua Peotter, 29, Rockland, counted among his passions, his family and friends, big construction equipment and muscle cars.

William K. Hill, 43, Appleton went by his middle name Keith. He liked to play practical jokes.

Danielle Meyer, 18, a nursing student from Tomah, loved to write poems. She had one published last year.

In 2007, Peotter, Hill and Meyer all died in drunken driving crashes and are among drivers and victims listed in Gannett’s online map.

‘The way it has to be’

At the state’s hygiene lab, the story of tragedies such as these reveals itself in clinical terms.

Blood samples arrive at the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene in glass vials that hold 30 milliliters, or about as much as a bar’s shot glass.

In a brick building on Madison’s far east side, analysts test each sample using a box-like machine called a gas chromatograph. They code each sample with a unique ID number. They record the test results.

The lab’s analysts know what ID numbers belong to what samples, but they don’t know who the sample came from. They don’t know what blood might have belonged to Peotter, Hill or Meyer.

“That’s the way it has to be, that’s the way you would want it to be,” said Pat Harding, supervisor of the lab’s toxicology department. “Our results have to be unimpeachable.

“It can’t be tainted by emotion.”

About 315 times a year, attorneys call on hygiene lab analysts to testify in trial about their alcohol samples.

“We see the devastation that drunk driving causes,” Harding said. “(Because) we analyze the sample from the drunk driver that killed five kids. We go to court and we see the families.

“Sure, we see that all the time.”

But for Harding and other analysts, clear-eyed science must trump emotion, because what matters in the end is the answer, the level of alcohol that the gas chromatograph identified in a small vial of fluid, extracted by a needle that once met flesh.