EDITORIAL: Mystery of the tragedy on the Taconic
In the tragedy of Diane Schuler and the seven other lives cut short by her drunken driving, our society's insatiable appetite for information runs into the boundless capacity of the human heart to harbor deep, unknowable secrets.
We wanted to learn that illness caused her fatal wrong-way driving on the Taconic Parkway. But the toxicology report shows that she was blind drunk on alcohol and marijuana, both apparently consumed as she drove back to Long Island.
That finding turned the seven deaths - her daughter, her brother's three daughters, and three men in the car she hit - into homicides. But it didn't answer the gnawing questions that cling stubbornly to this devastatingly sad story.
If she had a history of alcoholism or drug abuse, what was she doing driving those kids? If she did not, what tragic event or unfathomable impulse could have suddenly led her to drink so recklessly with all those budding young lives in her charge? If she was bent on suicide, why kill the kids too?
Even as investigators keep probing, we have to accept the real possibility that the ultimate answers may be out of reach, buried in the forever-stilled heart of Diane Schuler. hN
