Police Delve Into Mind-Set of Drunken Woman Whose Crash Killed Eight

Police Delve Into Mind-Set of Drunken Woman Whose Crash Killed Eight

By LISA W. FODERARO and AL BAKER
Published: August 5, 2009

She was a warm, capable executive for Cablevision for more than decade, a working mother with two handsome children and a well-kept home in West Babylon, N.Y., where neighbors said she always greeted them with a wave.

On the weekend of July 25 and 26, when Diane Schuler and her husband, Daniel, were at a lakefront campground in Sullivan County with their children and three nieces, nothing seemed amiss. Fellow campers who have known the family for years detected no signs of conflict.

“We saw them heading down to the beach with their swim tubes and gear,” said Sharon Gregor, whose campsite was near the Schulers’. “At this campground if someone sneezes two campsites down from us, I say, ‘Bless you.’ It’s very quiet up here. You would hear something.”

But between leaving the campground at 9:30 a.m. on Sunday and 1:30 that afternoon, something went drastically awry in the life of Diane Schuler.

Investigators revealed Tuesday that she had been drunk and high on marijuana as she drove a minivan 1.7 miles in the wrong direction on the Taconic State Parkway in Westchester County. She finally collided head-on with a Chevrolet TrailBlazer in one of the worst crashes in the New York region in memory.

She ended up taking her own life and the lives of seven others: her 2-year-old daughter Erin, her three nieces and three men from Yonkers in the S.U.V.
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Police Delve Into Mind-Set of Drunken Woman Whose Crash Killed Eight