Rell ‘Rethinking’ Extending Drinking Hours
By RINKER BUCK
The Hartford Courant
March 9, 2009
Following a Connecticut College student’s death Saturday in an accident that police attributed to drunken driving, Gov. M. Jodi Rell will “rethink” her proposal to extend the drinking hours at casinos.
Elizabeth Durante, a Connecticut college student on her way to Africa to spend her spring break distributing medical supplies, was killed early Saturday when the van she was riding in was hit head-on by a car driven by a sailor from the Groton submarine base. The accident happened on I-395 in Montville, near the exit for the Mohegan Sun casino. State police charged the sailor, Daniel Musser, with manslaughter and driving under the influence of alcohol.
State police are investigating whether Musser, a machinist’s mate from Missouri, had been at the casino before the accident, which killed Durante and injured the driver and seven other Connecticut College students on their way to Logan International Airport in Boston for a flight to Africa.
Lt. J. Paul Vance, state police spokesman, said that it might be weeks before investigators determine where Musser was before the crash.
In February, as part of her plan to close the state’s budget gap, Rell and Republican lawmakers proposed that drinking hours at the state’s casinos be extended to 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Current laws require the casino bars to close by 1 a.m. on Sunday through Thursday nights and 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights.
“This was an unconscionable tragedy and the heartbreaking loss of a very special young lady,” Rell said Sunday through her spokesman, Christopher Cooper. “Even though this event occurred under the laws on the books for years, it does give one pause to question the wisdom of extending liquor service hours at the casinos. Whether it’s 3 p.m. or 3 a.m. the first responsibility rests with patrons, and bartenders should not continue to serve someone who is drunk. But no proposal or idea is worth the potential loss of innocent young lives. I believe we should rethink extending the hours of serving liquor at casinos.”
The proposal to extend liquor service to 24 hours – the practice at Atlantic City and Las Vegas casinos – was met with sharp criticism by many state legislators, and Rell’s call to reconsider the idea is expected to kill the measure, at least for this legislative session.
“You know that proposal is dead now, right?” Sen. Edith G. Prague, D-Columbia, said Sunday. “I like the governor, but this idea of letting casinos serve 24 hours a day, someone gave her bad advice.”
This session, Prague introduced a bill that carries a mandatory minimum 10-year sentence for anyone convicted of manslaughter while driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
“Even that isn’t enough,” Prague said. “I have been thinking about that poor young woman’s family.”
Prague said that if the investigation shows that Musser had been drinking at a casino, then the casino should be subject to punishment under the dram shop rule, which holds sellers of alcohol accountable for damages caused by drunken patrons or customers.
Durante was a popular student at Connecticut College, dedicated to public service, and she lived in the college’s “substance-free” dormitory and had campaigned against college drinking.
Stefanie Hinman of Norfolk, 20, was a close friend of Durante’s and had shared a dorm room with her for the past three years, since they entered Connecticut College as freshmen. Last year, Hinman and Durante spent their spring break with a Vassar College group traveling to the impoverished Ugandan city of Kaberamaido, working in health clinics and an orphanage. They had spent this fall and winter raising money and soliciting medical supplies for a return trip to the city this month, where they had hoped to distribute everything from antibiotics to surgical supplies.
Hinman and Durante had also founded Connecticut College’s EMS unit and worked together in an afternoon program for homeless children in New London. They often spent their vacations volunteering for EMS teams in Norfolk and near Durante’s hometown of West Islip, N.Y. Hinman was in a car following the van carrying Durante when the accident occurred Saturday morning.
“Elizabeth was amazing and just never stopped giving for the community,” Hinman said from her parents’ house in Norfolk on Sunday. “In addition to raising all the supplies for the clinics in Uganda, she never stopped coming up with new plans for taking homeless kids on fields trips or working on our plans for an EMS unit at the college. She was very confident, very set on her goals of becoming a doctor so she could help people more. Her only weakness was putting her service work ahead of her homework, but she always managed to get that done, too.”
Courant staff writer Susan Campbell contributed to this story.
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