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No DUI in crash that killed Biden's 1st wife, but he's implied otherwise

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Desertdog:
1972 crash still haunts driver's family
No DUI in crash that killed Biden's 1st wife, but he's implied otherwise
By RACHEL KIPP " The News Journal " September 4, 2008

Since his vice presidential nomination, Joe Biden's 2007 statement that a "guy who allegedly ... drank his lunch" and drove the truck that struck and killed his first wife and daughter has gained national media traction.


Alcohol didn't play a role in the 1972 crash, investigators found. But as recently as last week, the syndicated TV show Inside Edition aired a clip from 2001 of Biden describing the accident to an audience at the University of Delaware and saying the truck driver "stopped to drink instead of drive."

The senator's statements don't jibe with news and law enforcement reports from the time, which cleared driver Curtis C. Dunn, who died in 1999, of wrongdoing.

"To see it coming from [Biden's] mouth, I just burst into tears," Dunn's daughter, Glasgow resident Pamela Hamill, 44, said Wednesday. "My dad was always there for us. Now we feel like we should be there for him because he's not here to defend himself."

Biden spokesman David Wade said Wednesday that the senator "fully accepts the Dunn family's word that these rumors were false."

It's unclear who first suggested alcohol was a factor in the crash, but since Barack Obama tapped Biden to be his running mate on Aug. 23, The New York Times, National Public Radio and The Economist have run stories that characterized Dunn as a drunken driver.

"The rumor about alcohol being involved by either party, especially the truck driver, is incorrect," said Jerome O. Herlihy, a Delaware Superior Court judge who was chief deputy attorney general and worked with crash investigators in 1972.

"If it were some part of a cause of the accident, there would have been a charge, simply because if you're driving under the influence and kill someone in the process -- whether it's the wife of a U.S. senator or anybody else -- there's going to be a charge," he said.

Herlihy said investigators discussed several possible causes for the crash, including that Biden's first wife, Neilia, turned her head and didn't see the oncoming truck as she exited the intersection of Limestone and Valley roads on Dec. 18, 1972.

Neither Biden's book nor his campaign Web site directly addresses the alcohol issue, but the senator has done so publicly on at least two occasions.

The New York Times reported the 2007 crowd at the University of Iowa grew silent as Biden gave his version of what happened that day.

Continued At;
http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080904/NEWS02/809040379/1006/NEWS02

Standing Wolf:
If he were a Republicrat, the snivelers and whiners at the New York Times would be having the time of their lives over his life.

Hawkmoon:
A politician saying something that's not true?

I'm shocked ... absolutely shocked. Whatever is the world coming to when politicians don't speak the truth?

Monkeyleg:
Not the first politician to use a dead relative as a prop.

I wonder why the Dunn family hasn't sued.

De Selby:

--- Quote from: Monkeyleg on September 21, 2008, 05:05:12 PM ---Not the first politician to use a dead relative as a prop.

I wonder why the Dunn family hasn't sued.

They didn't meet a lawyer who was desperate enough for cash to misrepresent some odd chance of winning a lawsuit.

Honestly, I do not see the controversy here-he thinks the guy was drinking, and unless this is connected to some weird MADD event or something similar, I'm not sure how it has anything to do with his political antics.

The article is oddly vague about the case too-it seems to only evidence offered is a Judge who says "there would have been a charge" had there been alcohol.

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