Posted on 04/18/2006 8:20:35 AM PDT by CedarDave
An Albuquerque bar and a bartender are in trouble for selling alcohol to two intoxicated men who were killed when a drunken driver crashed into the taxi cab they were riding in.
Ray Martinez, 50, and Kenneth Martinez, 36, had been at Malarky's before calling the cab to take them home. They and cab driver Daniel Magnuson, 46, were killed when a drunken driver ran a red light and collided with the cab before dawn on Thanksgiving Day.
The Special Investigations Division of the state Department of Public Safety announced Monday it has cited Malarky's for selling to intoxicated persons under the state Liquor Control Act. Bartender Mary Lotspeich was also cited for the same offense.
Division investigators said toxicology reports show one of the two passengers in the cab had a blood-alcohol content of 0.298 percent, more than twice the standard of 0.14 percent used to support the charge of selling to an intoxicated person.
The other passenger had a blood-alcohol content of 0.12 percent, according to investigators.
The division had previously cited the Horse & Angel Tavern for over-serving Gabriel Gurule, the driver of the vehicle that crashed into the cab. Toxicology tests showed Gurule's blood-alcohol content was more than twice the legal limit of 0.08 percent. Gurule pleaded no contest in March to three counts of homicide by motor vehicle and one count of great bodily injury.
(Excerpt) Read more at abqjournal.com ...
My bad , I read of as at.
I think people are missing the point here because its burried in the article:
"The division had previously cited the Horse & Angel Tavern for over-serving Gabriel Gurule, the driver of the vehicle that crashed into the cab. Toxicology tests showed Gurule's blood-alcohol content was more than twice the legal limit of 0.08 percent. Gurule pleaded no contest in March to three counts of homicide by motor vehicle and one count of great bodily injury."
The bar had also over-served the guy who ultimately killed the other two, I think the cops are just throwing every thing they can at them to make sure something sticks.
bump
oh good grief! Lunacy! why don't they just dig up the dead cab riders and fine them too!!!
"Backdoor prohibition."
I agree 100%.
Here's a link to the original journal article (November 25, 2005).
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/metro/410986metro11-25-05.htm
There was a passenger in the car driven by the drunk driver and the accident happened about 2 a.m. which is the closing hour for bars in ABQ, IIRC.
ping
No, the two guys in the cab had been drinking at a place called Malarkey's. The drunk driver had been at the Horse and Angel Tavern, which was separately cited.
There are two bars involved -- the one that served the passengers and the one that served the drunk driver. The one that served the drunk driver was rightly cited under the law (though I may disagree with it). They used the same law to cite the bar that served the passengers, though the passengers didn't commit any crime and indeed by taking a cab were avoiding committing a crime by not driving drunk.
I added Texas to the topics because that state is citing people in bars, even hotel bars where they go to their room after drinking in the bar.
"There is no logic here"
But there is. It is against the law to knowingly overserve a bar patron. While this can certainly be used (and often is) as a "gotcha" by the liquor authories against an establishment with a history of trouble, any bartender who can't tell that a customer who turns out to have a BAC of .298 is too intoxicated to be served deserves to slapped hard. This is just an example of the police writing up everyone who had anything to do with this avoidable mess.
In Texas they would have been stopped from getting in the cab and would instead have taken a ride to jail.
I'm not so sure a bartender should be serving someone whose BAL is a .3...that's pretty hammered.
If only there had been some Texas Rangers in the bar to arrest the guys before they could call the cab.
Exactly. Here we go again...
I'm not sure why the cops tested the victims of the crash as they were not driving but were just the passengers. If they had focused only on the person responsible and not the victims this whole issue would have been avoided.
Oh, I think COngress should investigate. We can't have drunk people calling cabs.
the bar was written after the fact, after they had left the bar. we have no idea how these guys had gotten so drunk. if they had brought their own flask to the bar unbeknownst to the bartender, what then? this seems to be a little over the top.
but i can only assume the cops went to the bar and interviewed the bartenders about what they served the patrons and then summonsed them.
Good point. As it appears the citation is strictly a result of the BAC of the cab passengers, the state agency is assuming all the alcohol consumed was from the bar. Also, the bartender/waitress may have performed a good deed by making sure they didn't drive and took a cab instead. At look at the result -- they are the one's cited. What irony. What lunacy!
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