Drunk Driving

It's 1:46 a.m. in the Bat Cave, the secret location for Safe Rides. After four hours of watching videos, drinking soda, eating pizza and trying to sample all 39 flavors from a jar of jellybeans, the tired group of three teenage boys and three teenage girls prepares to call it a night. Suddenly, the phone rings. Everyone becomes quiet. "Hello, Safe Rides," answers Kelly Twarowski, a junior at Canyon High School. The caller, a 17-year-old boy, says he's drunk and needs a ride home.

Terry Herst has had a good year to make up for one of the worst days of her life. In fact, Herst, a diabetic, says that since a View story on her travails appeared last April, she has continued to transform her disease and her drunk-driving arrest into positive assets in her life.

Just a few hours before crashing his city-owned vehicle last week, former Riverside Police Chief Russ Leach had been drinking at a strip club in Colton, according to a lawyer for the club and surveillance video. Leach went into the topless Club 215 at 10:24 p.m. Feb. 7 and drank four Chivas Regal Scotch whiskeys, ate chicken wings and left at 1:48 a.m. Feb. 8, said club attorney Roger Jon Diamond. "He was very dignified and behaved himself," Diamond said. "He was eating and drinking by himself, but he did interact with other people."

The last thing the Bammers wanted was litigation. They believed in forgiveness, they said, and had faith that it was God's job, not the courts', to balance the scales. But when the parents of the drunk driver who killed their daughter failed to express remorse, they got an attorney and sued. "We prayed a lot about it," Nancy Bammer said of the family's decision to sue the parents of one of their daughter's friends. "It really wasn't for economics; there was a need to get the word out."

He dreams that they are driving again, all eight boys cruising along the unpaved back roads of his mind. He begs them to pull over and let him out, he should get home, but they tell him to shut up and relax, everything will be fine. Reluctant, he sits back and lets himself be chauffeured across the stark landscape of his subconscious, past low-flying clouds of blame and guilt. He lets himself be ferried through the long night, until morning comes and the alarm goes off. Time to go to school.

For the last seven years, Horace, a four-time convicted drunk driver, has lived with an electronic probation officer in the front seat of his red sedan. The device, an "ignition interlock," acts as a breath-alcohol analyzer and requires him to prove he's sober before the engine will start. New Mexico, which led the nation in alcohol-related crash rates for years, in 2005 became the first state to require the interlock for every convicted drunk driver.

A Laguna Beach physician with a history of drunk driving arrests was convicted on two murder counts Wednesday for driving while intoxicated and causing a car wreck that killed a Mission Viejo couple and injured three others. Dr. Ronald Allen, 32, who was well known for treating poor AIDS patients, becomes one of the few drivers in Orange County to be charged and convicted of second-degree murder for taking lives while driving under the influence.

Ryan Dallas Cook was homeward bound on his motorcycle on an October night in 2005 when he clipped a stalled, darkened SUV that had rammed into a concrete barrier on the 55 Freeway, an impact that hurled him to the pavement, where he was hit by several passing cars and died. Police said the driver of the SUV was a Hyundai executive who had allegedly spent a long night drinking.

Chance, religion and the law collided with life-or-death consequences on a dark stretch of Sierra Madre Avenue in Azusa in March, when a suspected drunk driver hit a disabled car that plowed into four people standing on the roadside. Most seriously injured was Jadine Russell, a 55-year-old mother of five and a devout Jehovah's Witness who died hours later, after refusing a blood transfusion that might have saved her life. "No blood!"

A veteran Los Angeles police officer surrendered Friday to face allegations that he engaged in sexual activities in a parking lot and then led Buena Park police officers on a high-speed chase. David Robert Bergstrom, 36, of Orange pleaded not guilty to charges of lewd conduct, evading arrest, drunk driving and trying to bribe a witness in connection with an incident that began in the parking lot of an adult theater.

Just a few hours before crashing his city-owned vehicle last week, former Riverside Police Chief Russ Leach had been drinking at a strip club in Colton, according to a lawyer for the club and surveillance video. Leach went into the topless Club 215 at 10:24 p.m. Feb. 7 and drank four Chivas Regal Scotch whiskeys, ate chicken wings and left at 1:48 a.m. Feb. 8, said club attorney Roger Jon Diamond. "He was very dignified and behaved himself," Diamond said. "He was eating and drinking by himself, but he did interact with other people."

The day after Westminster City Councilman Andy Quach was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving for crashing his Mercedes-Benz into a pole and knocking out power to more than 300 homes, further investigation revealed that Quach's car and another moving vehicle had collided just moments before, Westminster police said. Quach was driving east on McFadden Avenue just after midnight Sunday when he hit another car that was also traveling east, said Sgt. Dan Schoonmaker.

For the last seven years, Horace, a four-time convicted drunk driver, has lived with an electronic probation officer in the front seat of his red sedan. The device, an "ignition interlock," acts as a breath-alcohol analyzer and requires him to prove he's sober before the engine will start. New Mexico, which led the nation in alcohol-related crash rates for years, in 2005 became the first state to require the interlock for every convicted drunk driver.

Sonoma County's head of drunk driving and drug addiction programs has been arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence. Tom Newell, a supervisor in the Department of Health Services' drug and alcohol services division, was arrested Friday after authorities spotted him driving recklessly just west of Sebastopol. The California Highway Patrol says Newell is believed to have been under the influence of a painkiller. Toxicology tests are still pending and he is due in court on June 18. Newell says he's been taking prescription painkillers for chronic pain from five knee surgeries and a hip replacement.

Everyone knows it's dangerous and illegal for a sloppy drunk to get behind the wheel and power the car home through an alcoholic haze. And it's certainly dangerous and illegal for a tipsy twentysomething starlet or a trashed fortysomething actor to buzz through city streets among the rest of us. Consider it sheer luck if their reckless behavior hasn't yet caused injury or death.

Charles Barkley didn't blame a wife or a cousin or the family dog for putting some unknown substance into his glass or forcing him to get behind the wheel of some unidentifiable vehicle after having a drink. Barkley came back to the TNT "Inside The NBA" show Thursday night for the first time in nearly two months and he was mostly just Charles, maybe biting his lip a little but also accepting blame for his arrest in December for driving under the influence.

Ryan Dallas Cook was homeward bound on his motorcycle on an October night in 2005 when he clipped a stalled, darkened SUV that had rammed into a concrete barrier on the 55 Freeway, an impact that hurled him to the pavement, where he was hit by several passing cars and died. Police said the driver of the SUV was a Hyundai executive who had allegedly spent a long night drinking.

A man who crashed his Hummer into a Los Angeles Police Department patrol car has been arrested on felony drunken driving charges, authorities said Sunday. George Angulo, 45, of Los Angeles allegedly ran a stop sign and struck the patrol car about 5:10 p.m. Saturday near West Avenue 36 and Portner Street in Glassell Park, police said. The two officers in the vehicle were injured and taken to a hospital. One of the officers was treated and released, but the other officer stayed in the hospital awaiting surgery for a broken leg, said Karen Smith of the LAPD.

Prosecutors charged Oscar-winning screenwriter Roger Avary with gross vehicular manslaughter on Friday, alleging that the author of such hits as "Pulp Fiction" and last year's "Beowulf" was driving drunk when he killed a passenger and injured his wife in a rural Ojai car crash. Avary, 43, pleaded not guilty in a Ventura courthouse to manslaughter and other charges connected to the Jan. 13 single-car collision.

Vodka on ice and driving while intoxicated took on new meaning last week when an employee at Kingsville Arena in Canada was arrested and charged with drunk driving while behind the wheel of a Zamboni. Witnesses said the driver, a 34-year-old woman, was driving erratically while resurfacing the arena ice, bumping into the boards and missing large patches of ice, evidently having fallen asleep at the wheel. According to the Windsor Star, the woman had a "mickey of vodka" in her pocket.