The court transcripts tell a disturbing story of overdrinking to the point that Rivera told Gallo outside a strip mall in Covina to drive because he knew he would be "blanking out." The transcripts and news reports say the two had been drinking heavily at two saloons in Covina just a few doors apart in a redeveloped strip mall off San Bernardino Road across from the Home Depot. They were the last places the pair were seen drinking before the crash that killed the Angels rookie April 9.
Gallo, the former Northview High School student, somehow drove to Fullerton shortly after Adenhart pitched his first game of the year at Angel Stadium and was headed to a dance club with Stewart to celebrate. Gallo was apprehended a mile away from the Fullerton intersection in which his car collided with Stewart's, killing the driver, two passengers and severely injuring another passenger, former Cal State Fullerton baseball player Jon Wilhite, who is miraculously recovering from what doctors call internal decapitation. Gallo, according to ESPN.com, told police "I (screwed) up." Rivera, the transcripts say, sat in a fetal position outside the smashed minivan and repeated over and over: "We killed those people. We killed those people." Court transcripts said the two men were so inebriated that when they left Covina, they thought they were heading to San Gabriel. They couldn't account for more than 90 minutes after they left Covina until the crash in Fullerton.
California law says bartenders are not to serve anyone who is intoxicated. So clearly a key question in this tragedy that apparently began in the San Gabriel Valley is, should bartenders at the bars where this pair was drinking have stopped serving the pair? Would one less drink have stopped the two from blanking out?
Transcripts quote a bartender who said Gallo was drinking at both bars, including one in Covina where waitresses serve oversized beers called "Boombahs" and wear bikinis. The witnesses put them at the bars around 10:30 p.m. and Rivera told the court that's when they left and when he passed out in the minivan.
The Orange County District Attorney said Gallo's blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit when arrested. It was revealed later that Stewart, the driver of the Mitsubishi
Covina police make routine patrols at all the bars in town, but told our editorial board it is tough to do more than regular "bar checks" with current staffing levels. The city does participate in a special DUI enforcement program headed up by the Glendora Police Department. It had tried for a state Alcoholic Beverage Control grant, but didn't get it.
The big question is: Can't more be done to apprehend drivers leaving Covina bars or any other San Gabriel Valley bar so drunk that they don't know the difference in direction between Fullerton and San Gabriel? Can Covina PD step up patrols around these two bars separated by only a few doors in the same strip mall, which together may form a place where people go to get seriously drunk and later end up driving drunk? Do the two bars being so close together make for an unsafe pairing, a situation the City Council could consider examining under the Conditional Use Permit process? Shouldn't all cities re-examine a similar situation where bars are clustered together?
There also is a broader solution to an endemic problem. Recent reports say that many states, including New Mexico, require those convicted of a single driving while intoxicated offense to install an "interlocking" device on their cars that prevents operation if the driver has been drinking. The driver is required to breathe into a tube in order to engage the ignition. If the driver has been drinking at all, the car will not operate. The program has been credited with reducing the number of DUI deaths in New Mexico from 2004 to 2008 by 35 percent, from 219 to 143, according to a published report.
In Southern California, where driving is often part of nearly every activity, why hasn't this mandatory program been implemented, instead of only in the case of multiple DUI convictions and at a judge's discretion? Here's a tested program other states are using to cut down on drunken driving deaths and it's not being done regularly - beyond a planned test program somewhere down the line - here in the car capital of the world. It used to be California was ahead of the curve. On this issue, it is behind.
Andrew Gallo had been convicted of DUI in San Bernardino County in 2006. On April 8-9, 2009, he was driving his car on a suspended driver's license. If only an interlock installed on his car after his conviction in San Bernardino had prevented it from starting that April night in Covina ... we'd be writing a different story today.
Source
