Dude! Congratulations on acting like a complete and utter jerk on your first day on FR! (First post?) I have read the coverage. For you to claim otherwise is idiotic and arrogant. I will not bother responding point-by-point to all of the illogic in your reply. Stew on this one point: In Romania it is illegal to drive with ANY alcohol in your blood. If you are in an accident in that country and you have ANY alcohol in your blood and the other driver doesn't then this creates a legal presumption of liability on your part. This, at least, is my understanding of the law there as I spelled out quite clearly and without insult to you or the Marine in my posts above. If this is in fact the way Romanian law is, then your family member has managed to screw the pooch, to not put too fine a point on it. You acting like a jerk on this board changes nothing. Thank you for your participation in this discussion all the same.
Dude, yourself.
So, You are denying that you posted his blood alcohol level was "Illegal in Ca and several other states"?
You are wrong. I corrected you.
And since you are counting my posts, you can call this my last. Your compassion and intelligence are just too overwhelming for me.
An ally's anger, a Virginian's aid
Crash-team investigator helps probe wreck that killed Romanian rock star
BY MARK BOWES
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Monday, February 7, 2005
The mechanics of the wreck seemed rather routine, but it involved a minefield of international politics. Rick Dowsett had to tread lightly as he reconstructed the crash.
He wasn't on familiar turf. He couldn't speak the language. He wasn't versed in international diplomacy.
But as a seasoned Virginia State Police crash-team investigator, he had the expertise the military needed to study a politically charged case that ruffled relations between the United States and Romania, a U.S. ally in the war in Iraq.
The circumstances were beyond anything Dowsett had previously investigated: A Marine staff sergeant stationed in Bucharest, driving a U.S. embassy vehicle, collided with a taxi carrying a popular Romanian rock star, killing him last December.
Allegations were immediately leveled at the Marine, who was accused in the Romanian press of drinking, speeding and failing to yield to the taxi that carried Teo Peter, the 50-year-old founding member of the Romanian rock band Compact.
Romanians reacted with shock and grief to the veteran rocker's death. Hundreds turned out for his funeral in the Transylvanian city of Cluj, his birthplace.
Meanwhile the Marine, commander of the security detachment guarding the U.S. embassy in Bucharest, was whisked out of the country, triggering more anger and resentment. The Romanian premier wrote President Bush, urging him to "get involved" and calm public "outrage" by waiving the Marine's diplomatic immunity and returning him for possible prosecution.
U.S. officials refused, saying Staff Sgt. Christopher R. VanGoethem, 31, already had been scheduled within days to return to the United States as part of a normal rotation. His family had already moved from Bucharest when the wreck occurred.
But U.S. authorities promised a full investigation.
"As is U.S. Government practice, the Marine was returned to the U.S. to assist in our government's inquiries into this accident," said Jack Dyer Crouch, the U.S. ambassador to Romania, in a statement five days after the crash. "However, before he departed Bucharest, he met with Romanian police investigators and cooperated in their investigation."
That included answering questions, supplying a written statement and voluntarily submitting to a Breathalyzer test at the crash scene, Crouch said in the statement.
Against that backdrop, Dowsett was thrust into the squall.
The incident had U.S. military and State Department officials on guard.Susan Raser, a Naval Criminal Investigative Service supervisory special agent looking into the case, said U.S. authorities had no concerns about the ability of Romanian authorities to conduct an investigation. But they wanted someone like Dowsett to do an independent assessment and "verify that [the Romanian] methodology was sound, and we could trust their findings," she said.
The NCIS asked Virginia State Police for help investigating the crash. Dowsett was assigned to reconstruct the Dec. 4 wreck, drawing on his years of experience and using sophisticated computer and surveying equipment unavailable in Romania or within the U.S. military.
When first approached about going to Romania, Dowsett thought someone was playing a joke. He was told to call an NCIS agent.
"I'm going, 'You're not pulling my leg. You're serious.'"
Within five days Dowsett was touching down in the Romanian capital to take on what would be one of the most interesting jobs of his 30-year career.
The first day, he met with Dyer, the U.S. ambassador to Romania, and a Romanian prosecutor heading the investigation.
He found that Romanian law-enforcement officials "very much wanted to include me in what was being done."
Dowsett said he was surprised at the scale of the initial meeting, which included himself, an NCIS agent, the embassy's resident security officer, members of Peter's family, their lawyer and even the cab driver. Romanian law allowed family members to attend. Surprisingly, there was no animosity, he said.
"It was fun to watch the diplomacy," Dowsett said. "I wouldn't have known how to deal with it. Obviously [U.S. officials] wanted to see the right things be done, but they didn't want it to be a railroading job, either."
The prosecutor's office appointed its own expert -- an engineer who taught at a local university -- to work with Dowsett in reconstructing the crash. Dowsett said Romanian police were not involved with what he did and apparently are not trained in crash-reconstruction techniques.
Dowsett went to the crash site and took a few digital photographs to become familiar with the intersection.
Dowset was struck by how flawed and confusing the intersection was in terms of visibility and traffic control. Those problems contributed greatly to the crash, he said.
The intersection is controlled by a traffic signal but also has a stop sign for the road traveled by the Marine.
"During the day, you would ignore the stop sign if the light's green," Dowsett said. "At night, basically after midnight, it was the custom to put the lights on flash, and they flash amber in all four directions."
The wreck occurred at 4:30 a.m.
To further complicate matters, the controlling stop sign was obscured by the trunk of a large tree that leaned toward the road. "You could miss the stop sign" unless you knew it was there, he said.
City officials had installed another stop sign about 40 feet across on the opposite side of the street, "in an attempt to get the driver's attention," Dowsett said.
The Romanian news accounts made no mention of the intersection's flaws.
Dowsett and the Romanian engineer also debunked allegations that the Marine had been speeding. The Romanian estimated the Marine's Ford Expedition had been traveling about 40 kilometers per hour (24.8 mph) in 50-kph zone (31 mph). The engineer estimated the cab driver's vehicle, a tiny subcompact known as a Dacia, was in fact speeding, traveling 43 kph (26.6 mph) in a 30-kph zone (18.6 mph).
Dowsett's speed calculations were slightly higher but "very close" to the Romanian's, he said.
The Marine had been drinking alcohol earlier but the amount was negligible, Dowsett said. "His blood-alcohol content was not enough, by the police statement, for them to take action. Nor would it have been enough had he been here."
In the end, Dowsett said, his view of the wreck didn't vary greatly from the Romanian engineer's version of events.
"But the problem was, their focus was very narrow -- find out who caused the harmful event, what moment did it happen, and that's all they look at," Dowsett said. "They're not taking into consideration, like we would here, that a vehicle [the cab] speeding down the highway loses its right of way and contributes to the crash.
"They're only looking at: If the [Marine] had stopped at the stop sign, the crash wouldn't have happened -- period."
Backing up the crash four seconds, Dowsett calculated the cab would have missed colliding with the Marine's vehicle by 40 feet had the cab been traveling the speed limit.
Dowsett said it's hard to say whether the Marine would have been charged for a similar wreck in this country. Reckless driving could apply, but even that might not be pursued depending on how the local prosecutor's office viewed the case.
"In all likelihood, some of the prosecutors I've worked with would probably have said, 'You've got a civil matter here, you've got fault on both sides. So let the civil courts deal with it. I don't want to prosecute."
An interim investigative report of the crash, with Dowsett's input, is being drafted now, said NCIS special agent Raser. The military command will ultimately decide whether to refer the case for prosecution through a court-martial or other military proceeding, she said.
Contact Mark Bowes at (804) 649-6450 or mbowes@timesdispatch.com
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