Personal Injury Law

Death of a Firefighter -- Part 2 in an editorial series

By Steve Lombardi

Part 2 in an editorial series by The Oregonian Editorial Board

Every good paramedic knows the symptoms of alcohol poisoning, and Shannon Halvorson exhibited most of them on that deadly night in 2003.

Police reports show she was incoherent and listless.

She could no longer walk.

She was nauseous and vomiting.

She was fading in and out of consciousness.

Among many troubling aspects of Halvorson's death is the fact that symptoms of her alcohol poisoning were so obvious in a motel party suite filled with paramedics and EMTs, yet none of them summoned medical help or took her to a hospital. Instead, two male firefighters tried to take her someplace else -- to sleep it off, they told police -- but she never got there.

More than 300 pages of police reports and other public records tell an appalling story of what happened to Halvorson that night of June 12, 2003. As a crowd of men egged her on, the 20-year-old Prineville firefighter became dangerously intoxicated in a Holiday Inn hospitality suite during an Oregon Volunteer Firefighters Association conference in Albany.

Just before midnight, according to police reports, Prineville firefighters Mark McCallum, 42, and Tony McGarvey, 37, carried the young woman outside. There, McGarvey said he was too tired to carry her any farther, so McCallum lifted her in a "fireman's carry," over his shoulder, and stumbled toward the Comfort Suites next door where the Prineville volunteers had rooms.

McCallum tripped in the parking lot and fell forward. This caused Halvorson's limp body to catapult violently forward. The back of her head hit the pavement with a sickening sound that witnesses likened to a bat smacking a ball.

Blood poured from her ears and nose. Other firefighters came running and scrambled to keep her breathing while an ambulance was summoned.

She died of the massive skull fracture about 12 hours later at a Corvallis hospital. Her blood alcohol level was measured at .22percent, nearly three times the legal driving limit of .08 percent and an especially dangerous level for a petite young woman like Halvorson.

McCallum's blood alcohol level tested at .18 percent, more than twice the legal limit for motorists in Oregon. McGarvey wasn't tested but he, like McCallum, couldn't remember all that happened during and after the party, reports said.

"Subjects in the area were drunk," wrote the first Albany police officer to arrive.

Yet no charges of negligence were brought in the case. Nor was anyone even charged with furnishing alcohol to a minor. Halvorson's father, Dick Zimmerlee of Bend, has been fighting ever since to bring attention to what he saw as a sympathetic circling of the wagons around the state firefighters association.

Zimmerlee has a compelling case, and the most haunting piece of it is what didn't happen that boozy night at a party packed with paramedics and EMTs who failed Shannon Halvorson.

Tomorrow we'll carry, The Coverup

If you drink as an underage teenager read this story and watch the YouTube video. I've previously written (here and here) about how much a young adult can drink before dying, this story should demonstrate to you how situations can escalate that result in a person dying.

For five days this week and two of the next week we will reprint, with permission, a story published by The Oregonian about Shannon Halvorson, an underage firefighter who died not through the line-of-duty, but under less than clear circumstances while at a training conference of the Oregon Volunteer Firefighters Association. The words and reporting is credited to The Oregonian. We wish to thank the Associate Editor, Doug Bates for granting us permission to do so and for Shannon's father, Dick Zimmerlee, whose tireless efforts will not let this matter rest until justice is done.

Full post as published by Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer on March 17, 2009 (boomark / email).