Personal Injury Law

Death of a Firefighter - Part 5 in an editorial series

By Steve Lombardi

This is the fifth 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.

The U.S. Justice Department should investigate the death of Prineville volunteer firefighter Shannon Halvorson.

Did her fellow volunteers conceal details of the out-of-control party where she was fatally injured? Who supplied alcohol to the underage woman?

Why weren't her blood samples sent to the state crime lab for date-rape drug testing? Did local authorities pursue the case vigorously or give the firefighters a sympathetic pass? Were Halvorson's civil rights violated?

Five years after her death, those questions still hang in the air like smoke. The case needs a fresh look by investigators from outside Linn County.

Yes, it's true that the 20-year-old woman bore some responsibility. She a minor and shouldn't have gone to the boozy party at an Albany motel suite during a state firefighters conference in 2003.

Nor should she have taken a swig of rum from the bottle that was handed to her at the doorway as a requirement for entering. That was her decision, and it was a dreadful mistake.

But at some point soon after that, as firefighters chanting "go, go, go" egged her on while she chugged liquor from open bottles, the responsibility for her safety shifted.

Several men in the room told police the scene made them uneasy. Among them was the party host, Dave Lapof, 48, state president of the volunteer firefighters association, who saw something wrong: "People trying to get a young girl drunk," he told police.

In a hospitality suite packed with paramedics and EMTs, intervention by just one person might have averted her death. Several partygoers told police she showed obvious signs of alcohol poisoning, but no one sought medical attention for her, and after she lost consciousness no one stood in the way when two inebriated firemen carried her away from the party.

Outside, one of the men hoisted her limp body over his shoulder, then tripped as he ran across a parking lot, pitching her head-first onto the pavement. She died 12 hours later of a massive head injury.

A grand jury found that no crime had been committed. Jurors told reporters that the district attorney's office had appeared to seek that finding.

But how could the volunteer firefighters be deemed not negligent when they furnished alcohol to a minor and encouraged her to drink until she should have been hospitalized? How were they not responsible for the accident that killed her?

On behalf of Halvorson's little boy, who was 3 at the time, a wrongful death suit was filed against the state volunteers association and Lapof, its president, as well as Crook County Fire & Rescue and the volunteer who accidentally slammed her to the pavement. Firefighters, however, are protected from large tort claims, and the suit was settled for a pittance.

The state association took up a collection and made a modest contribution to the boy's father, who has custody. The group owes the boy a lot more than that, and it owes her grieving family the formal apology they never received.

The group also must permanently end the alcohol abuse that's been notoriously out of control at its state conferences for years.

In America, firefighters are heroes, and more so than ever since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But on that night of deadly revelry in Albany, when Shannon Halvorson desperately needed a hero, there wasn't one in sight.

Her case should be reopened.

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 20, 2009 (boomark / email).