By Torsten Ove
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Copyright 2007 P.G. Publishing Co.
MARSHALL TOWNSHIP, Pa. — A young ambulance driver was drunk and speeding when she drove through a red light and slammed her vehicle into a car in Marshall in September, killing two men, the district attorney’s office said yesterday.
Shanea Leigh Climo, 22, of Evans City, had a blood alcohol level of about 0.092 when the crash happened at 2:20 a.m. Sept. 23, according to District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr.
“She was incapable of operating the vehicle,” he said at the Northern Regional Police Department in Pine. “She should not have been operating the vehicle under these circumstances.”
Northern Regional officers arrested Ms. Climo on charges of homicide by vehicle while driving under the influence and a host of related offenses.
A district judge released her on her own recognizance after an arraignment in City Court.
Ms. Climo was working the midnight shift for the Cranberry Volunteer Ambulance Corp. when she answered a call for a man in his 90s with heart problems.
Police said she was speeding on Perry Highway when she drove through a red light at the intersection with Brush Creek Road and smashed into the side of a Chevrolet Cavalier driven by Douglas Stitt, 38, of Mercer.
Mr. Stitt and his passenger, Phillip Bacon, 32, of Sharpsville, were pronounced dead at the scene.
Ms. Climo and another paramedic, William Humes, were injured, as was the elderly man they were transporting, Walter Gasowski, who has since died of causes unrelated to the crash.
The incident prompted Mr. Zappala to push state lawmakers for stricter rules governing how much alcohol ambulance drivers can have in their blood.
A similar law was enacted for school bus drivers in the wake of a 2002 accident in Elliott in which a school van struck and severely injured Katlynn Comer, then 9.
The driver, Jonathan Brown of Braddock, had a blood alcohol level of 0.03.
The state Legislature later passed Katlynn’s Law, a bill by state Sen. Jay Costa Jr., D-Wilkins, that lowered the allowable blood alcohol level for drivers of school buses and vans to 0.02.
Mr. Zappala said he’d like to see something like that for people who drive emergency vehicles.
“The question in my mind is, do you want an ambulance driver with any alcohol in their blood at all?” he said.
According to an affidavit, Ms. Climo was driving well above the posted 40 mph speed limit when the crash occurred.
Under the law, ambulance drivers have to slow down for red lights and can’t speed unless the call is urgent.
Mr. Zappala said this call didn’t meet that standard. Mr. Gasowski persuaded the paramedics to take him to the hospital, he said, but it was not a medical emergency that required speeding.
The law also requires a driver to activate both lights and siren.
According to recordings made by a video camera mounted in the ambulance, Ms. Climo had her lights on but didn’t reach for the siren switch until five seconds before impact with the Cavalier.
The siren didn’t come on until 2.25 seconds prior to impact, the recordings show.
Northern Regional accident reconstructionists determined that Ms. Climo had been pushing 70 mph as she approached the intersection.
Mr. Stitt’s Cavalier was the third vehicle to go through the green light, following behind a tractor-trailer.
Although Ms. Climo estimated her speed at 50 mph, police used landmarks seen in the video to calculate a speed of 67 mph at 800 feet from the intersection. At 200 feet, she was going 64 mph.
A blood alcohol reading taken at Allegheny General Hospital about an hour after the crash registered 0.07, just under the state’s 0.08 threshold for drunken driving. But investigators extrapolated backward and determined her level was 0.092 at the time of impact.
Police would not say where they believe Ms. Climo had been drinking, but they said they do not believe she was imbibing on the job. Prior to the crash, she had answered another call, but no one at the ambulance company noticed she was drunk.
Police would not say if she will be charged in connection with that first call, when her blood-alcohol level likely would have been higher.
Mr. Zappala said the video, recorded with equipment similar to that mounted on police cars, is a critical piece of evidence and urged the use of cameras on other commercial and emergency vehicles.
In the city, Yellow Cab has started using them as a way to monitor driver behavior. But company officials, who appeared with the district attorney, said that in several cases the videos also have helped solve robberies of cabbies.
Vehicle-mounted recorders also cut down on the costs of both civil litigation and criminal investigation, Mr. Zappala said.
A video is such good evidence in a criminal case, for example, that it reduces the need to track down witnesses whose accounts may differ.
In the Marshall crash, the tractor-trailer driver who proceeded through the intersection moments before the wreck didn’t stop to help or give a statement.
Mr. Zappala said he should have, but prosecutors don’t need him because of the video.