Personal Injury Law

Death of a Firefighter - Part 4 in an editorial series

By Steve Lombardi

This is the fourth installment in an editorial series about the accidental death of an underage volunteer firefighter at the hands of fellow firefighters. They got 20-year-old Shannon Halvorson dangerously intoxicated at a motel party in Albany, she ended up dead and her grieving father has been fighting five years for some accountability in the case.

In the anguished hours after Shannon Halvorson died, rumors and haunting questions spread like flames among her fellow volunteer firefighters.

How did she become incapacitated so quickly at that rowdy motel-room party? What were the intentions of the men who coaxed her to drink? Was she slipped a drug as well?

Robin McKnight, an Albany police detective, wanted to know, too. As leader of the investigation into her mortal injury at a wild party for volunteer firefighters on June 12, 2003, he called the hospital where she lay dying the next morning and wrote this in his report:

"I explained the seriousness of this investigation and requested there be blood and urine drawn for law enforcement purposes and also drawn to be tested for any type of controlled substances and any date rape drugs."

Halvorson, 20, began fading in and out of consciousness within 40 minutes of arriving at the late-night party. An inebriated male colleague, trying to carry her away from the party, stumbled in the parking lot, whipping her body forward onto the pavement so forcefully she suffered a fatal skull fracture.

Police reports quote witnesses at the party who suspected a certain firefighter -- not among her fellow volunteers from Crook County -- of trying to get her drunk for sex. When officers questioned the man about that, he acknowledged giving her a beer and egging her to chug whiskey from a bottle, but he denied sexual intentions.

"I'll admit she's an attractive girl," he told investigators. "I had my thoughts, but I wouldn't do anything."

You can't blame Halvorson's father, Dick Zimmerlee, for being suspicious of those reports. Especially after a private detective, hired for a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of Halvorson's surviving son, interviewed one firefighter who said in a civil affidavit that he had been told that the date rape drug Rohypnol was present at the party and that he was convinced he had ingested some of it.

It may well be that Halvorson, a petite young woman, drank so much so fast, as men chanted "go, go, go," that she passed out as quickly as she did. Nonetheless, the Albany detective, McKnight, correctly saw that the possibility of criminal drugging had to be investigated.

Yet Zimmerlee was rebuffed every time he asked to see the crime lab report on his daughter's blood. In the hospital toxicology examination, based on procedures not designed to meet legal forensic standards, she tested negative for controlled substances like marijuana and cocaine, but she was not tested at the hospital for date-rape drugs. That's the state crime lab's job.

McKnight, the lead investigator, wrote in a report that he put three vials of Halvorson's blood in a refrigerated evidence locker. So where's the crime lab report and what did it say?

George Eder, the Linn County deputy district attorney who handled the Halvorson case, told The Oregonian on Aug. 11 he couldn't recall what the tests turned up. We requested a copy of the test results, and Eder responded two days later with a terse letter saying "the samples were not submitted to a laboratory for analysis."

Like the grieving father, we're still waiting for an explanation.

Tomorrow: The aftermath

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 19, 2009 (boomark / email).