Posted: Friday, August 29, 2008 12:00 am
The U.S. Justice Department has better things to do than to investigate the sad case of a young volunteer firefighter who joins her fellow conventioneers in a drinking binge and then dies from a head injury.
The Portland Oregonian has just completed an unusual series of five daily editorials recounting the case of Shannon Halvorson, 20, from Prineville, who died in Albany in 2003. The theme was that in the investigation of her death the police and prosecutors were overly protective of the firefighters involved and that the Justice Department should look into the case.
The young mother, 20, had been attending an Albany conference of the Oregon volunteer firefighters association. Along with lots of other members, she ended up in the hotel room of the association president, where men old enough to be her father were drinking heavily and egged her on to do the same. When she passed out, a couple of firefighters started to take her to her own hotel across the parking lot. One of them carried her and stumbled. Her head hit the pavement. She died at the hospital.
Albany police reports on the case show a thorough investigation. Officers interviewed everyone they could find.
This happened in mid-June. At the end of July, the district attorney's office presented the case to a Linn County grand jury, which heard from more than 20 witnesses but found no one to charge with a crime.
The Oregonian reported an allegation, apparently made as part of a civil process, that someone thought the woman might have been slipped a date-rape drug. Albany police had bodily fluids taken from the body to test for illicit drugs, and the Portland paper found it significant that the samples were not actually sent in for testing. But that's not unusual. In any such case the police will initially gather up all the possible physical evidence they can. But if there's no evidence that a crime has been committed, there is no reason to call for toxicology tests.
In any case, the hospital did test for illegal drugs, and the tests were negative.
There's no shortage of misconduct in this case, starting with an under-age person getting drunk and the failure of all those men in the room to look out for this young woman, or to call in sober EMTs when it was apparent that she was in bad shape.
Misconduct galore, but it's hard to see that there was a crime, let alone a federal one. (hh)