The family of Diane Schuler today insisted she wasn't an alcoholic. And they're disputing the medical examiner's toxicology report that her blood alcohol level was 0.19 - more than two times the legal limit.
Maybe, they say, she had a stroke and that's why she drove nearly two miles the wrong way on the Taconic Parkway on July 26, crashing head on into another car - and killing herself and seven others, including her daughter and three nieces.
Or maybe, they say, it was abscess in her mouth that she'd had for several weeks, or the moving bump in her leg.
Are we to believe that the medical examiner - analyzing the blood alcohol level for what was the deadliest auto accident in Westchester County in decades - got it all wrong?
Or is this just all legal posturing by the family, and their lawyer, Dominic Barbara, the former attorney for Joey Buttafuoco, and the attorney for the surgeon from Long Island who sued his ex-wife for the value of the kidney he donated to her?
We'll have the latest on the accident, and reaction to the family's remarkable claims, tonight at 11.
Also at 11, Jeff Pegues has new developments tonight in a story we broke last night on Eyewitness News. New questions are being raised about how the /*Jersey City*/ police planned, coordinated and pulled off their stakeout and subsequent shootout with two armed robbery suspects on July 16. The suspects were killed - but so too was a Jersey City police officer. And four cops were wounded.
All this police bloodshed by definition means that the operation didn't go well. Tonight, there's an internal investigation: What could cops have done differently?
We'll also have reaction at 11 on the confirmation of New Yorker Sonia Sotomayor as the newest Supreme Court Justice. She's also the first Hispanic to sit on the high court.
We'll also have any breaking news of the night, plus Lee Goldberg's AccuWeather forecast, and Scott Clark with the night's sports, including the first of four games between the Yankees and the Red Sox. I hope you can join Sade Baderinwa (in for Liz Cho) and me, tonight at 11.
BILL RITTER
