Bad Judgement While Drunk Leads To Girl’s Death – IOTW Report

Bad Judgement While Drunk Leads To Girl’s Death

Tuesday, 19 January 2016, 13:13 BFH Uncategorized 52

freeze19n-2-webThis 21 year-old was at a house party. She was drunk, got into a fight and left.

The other people at the party assumed that when she stormed out in her shorts and tank top she was being picked up by someone.

Surveillance cameras in the neighborhood recorded her taking her finals steps before collapsing.

What was the problem?

She was in Milwaukee. It was 4:30 am. It was six degrees below zero, with a wind chill of minus thirty.

She never had a chance. She dropped into the snow. Went to sleep and never woke up.

Don’t drink and drive has to be updated to, “Don’t Drink and Walk in a Milwaukee Winter.”

Just last night I was going to the store at around 9:30 pm. It was pretty cold for Florida standards. (Maybe 48 degrees.) I haven’t worn a jacket but 3 times the entire time I’ve been here. I hesitated and went back and got one because it occurred to me that I could always break down with the car and I’d be screwed.

This happened to me with a friend back in the early 80s. We were going to a club so we didn’t bring coats, thinking we’d just be going from the car to the club and a coat is a pain in the ass. We were young, we weren’t thinking.

We ran out of gas in a weird area of Mount Vernon, NY around 5 in the morning. It was about 10 degrees out. No one had a cell phone back then. And no cars were coming by. After about 40 minutes it was no joke anymore and we had to make a decision. Wrapped in a plastic drop cloth we walked to a building and was able to get into the vestibule and we just started ringing buzzers until someone believed our story enough to let us use their phone.

Had we broken down in a remote area, I could definitely see the possibility of just dying out there.

iOTW tip: If you live in a winter locale like this, put a winter emergency set of clothes in the trunk with a blanket. You never know what could happen out there.

ht/ fdr in hell

52 Comments on Bad Judgement While Drunk Leads To Girl’s Death

  1. Those thin mylar “space blankets” are way, way better than nothing, and they take up no room to speak of, nor do plastic rain ponchos. Cold and dry is bad; cold and wet is calamitous. Put a few of these in your lock box to pad your firearm(s).

  3. Yep. Anything is better than nothing. Just give it a thought that it is very possible to find yourself without a phone, broken down, in very, very cold weather.
    It goes from “this sucks,” to “I’m an idiot that never prepared for this,” very quickly.

  4. Here in the snowbelt I keep an emergency kit in the car including a space blanket and some wool blankets from the thrift store. My husband thought I was being silly. Take a guess at whose car crapped out in seriously ugly weather in rural land. He didn’t have his cell phone and ended up walking 2 miles for help. He’s lucky there were no permanent consequences.

  7. I was in a club in January ~ thirty-five years ago. My buddies were playing in the band on Friday night. I had worked all day and was tired and laid down under the sound board on some shipping blankets that they hauled gear wrapped in to protect it. I woke up at about 03:30 freezing my ass off because they shut off the heat after the club closed. After about fifteen minutes I decided I had to get out or I was going to freeze to death and could not get to the phone because it was in a locked office.

    I picked up a bar stool and pitched it through a plate glass window and had another one I was using to break out the remaining glass with so I could crawl out without getting all cut up… and then the police came rolling up responding to a silent alarm.

  9. When I think about hypothermia and freezing to death I’m always reminded of Jack Nichilson and him being frozen in place in The Shining.

    I used to hunt out west and I always had a couple of the space blankets in my back pack plus a fire starter. We humans are delicate creatures. It’s a sad story about this young woman.

  10. My career Army dad made sure I had emergency supplies in the car all the time. Blankets, trenching tool, flares, water, water proofed matches and stuff for a small fire, MP’s whistle. Back in his day that included some Army issue C-Rations and the funky little can openers that came in the kits. Now I keep a few packets of freeze dried food. If he were still alive he would tell me always have my SIG 226 with me.

    Your PSA is important. I used to commute 45 miles one way through some rocky uninhabited areas, no cell phone reception, and learned my lesson with a piece of crap Chevy Impala. The head gasket blew when I was in an area I called ‘Deliverance’. Oh joy. The Impala ended up at the car shredder.

  15. When the earthquake hit I was in downtown SF. I was one of the very few that was prepared. I had tools, a flashlight, and a pistol and 3/4 tank of gas.
    All the cell towers were down, there was no power, even pay phones didn’t work. No BART, no electric street cars.
    Had the situation been just a little more severe nature would have raised the average IQ of that city by a good 10 points by culling lot of idiots.

  18. I taught Hunter Education here in WI for many years. I was amazed at the number of people, mostly teens, that would show up for class wearing BB shorts and tank tops/t-shirts (class was in February). When I called them on it they would all say that it was warm in the car. I’d talk about the “What if the car breaks down” scenario. Most learned after the second class.
    I also carry spare blankets in my vehicles. They were handy the time I was driving home in the wee hours (OK, I’ll admit that I had been wargaming with miniatures) in white out conditions. Two young gentlemen coming home from the bars had broken down. Their clothes were probably attractive to the ladies but Ol’ Man Winter didn’t give a f@ck how they looked. Got them in the truck, bundled up and drove them home. Middle of nowhere. Asshats would have died.
    My wife has gotten used to me. I may not be “stylin'” but By God I will be warm.
    Yeah, Mr. Mxyzptlk, you can’t save everyone but you can try to save some. Win/Lose the effort will be noticed up above…
    AC: got a back pack with some “goodies” and an ECWS bag just in case I need to walk home.

  19. Good advice. I have a can of Kippered Herrings in the glove compartment, a down sleeping bag and 2 polar fleece blankets in the back of my little Vibe. If I go off the road here in VT I want to survive until they find me.

  23. I grew up in Northern Utah on the Idaho border. I have experienced snow in different locales around my hometown in every month of the year. I live in Arizona now but still carry a sleeping bag and emergency kit year-round.

  31. Now wait a minute! lol
    I said I’d be “screwed,” not dead.
    Who wants to sit in a car waiting for a tow truck with just a t-shirt on in 48* weather?

    BUT, having said that. Technically, you can die of exposure in weather as “warm” as 60 degrees if you’re out wandering in the woods all night.

    Sounds hard to believe, but it’s true.

    And if you get wet, forget it.
    The situation goes to code red pretty quickly.

  32. Many years ago as a young man in PA I was attending a New Years Eve party with friends. I left the party at about 0300. The temperature was in the single digits with high winds and blowing snow. Being young and foolish I decided to take a short cut on a road known to drift badly. My 4X4 F150 was successful in busting through the snow drifts but suddenly I saw something up ahead. It was a young woman with a flimsy party dress and skimpy jacket. She was unable to talk when I picked her up. Upon getting her warmed up I found that she had had an argument with her date who threw her out of the car. If I had not made the stupid decision to take that road, she would not have survived.

  33. Growing up in Alaska, you learn this one pretty quick. My dad always kept in the back in the truck: a FULL (not empty) 1 gallon gas can, complete change of clothes with extra jacket, blanket, towel, knife and hatchet, road flares, tinder for a fire, and some food. Basically, he kept a bugout bag in the truck at all times. You never knew if you just weren’t going to make it home from work some night. And there were a couple of night I remember he did end up having to sleep in the truck because the roads were blocked, or he had skidded off into a snowbank.

    I’m down in Washington between Tacoma and Olympia, so the weather’s not that bad, but I still have an emergency bag in my trunk.

  35. Oh gawd lutefisk. Never say that word around a former Lutheran. Church would have covered dish suppers. My mom would fry some seriously good chicken.
    In the line up kids came last and all that would be left was nasty vegetables and lutefisk. That is the stuff of nightmares.

  36. In my big teenage Outward Bound adventure we learned the solution to that is everyone take off all your clothes and jump in a big pile of leaves. Never got the chance to try it.

  38. I keep votive candles and a lighter in my car, as well as a blanket. I read somewhere that a candle burning in a car can raise the temp by ten degrees. If I’m out in heels and a dress, I toss jeans and sneakers into the back seat, just in case.

  39. Good advice.
    And hindsight is 20/20.
    Keep onboard something for warmth…sleeping bag, blankets, solar blanket, candles and some simple nutrition…chocolate, energy bars, etc.
    But, mainly, keep your gas tank full !!
    If you go into the ditch or are even stuck due to road conditions, if you’ve got gas, you can keep the heat on.

  41. Just an aside, but did you know that Slim Pickens originally said “weekend in Dallas” and it was dubbed to “Vegas” after the JFK assassination?

    Dr. Strangelove, etc., is one of my all-time favorite movies.

  42. Sometimes I can’t be bothered wearing my mastectomy forms and just throw on a t-shirt over my jeans. I have short hair and usually don’t wear jewelry or makep.

    Waiter: Would you like a menu, sir?

    Me: Would you like a tip, asshole?

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