What is it about this tragedy that occurred in 2009 that is so palpable these four years later most deadly accidents and their victims are forgotten just months later? Perhaps it is the fact that this was the worst accident in 75 years in Westchester County. Perhaps it’s because five beautiful children were involved, only one of whom survived. Perhaps it is the absolutely unfathomable fact that this ‘rock’ of a mother drove the wrong way down a major highway at 85 mph, drunk and high, and smashed head-on into an SUV, killing the three men in that vehicle as well.
It is, I think the fact that nothing, and I mean NOTHING, about any of this makes sense. There is her husband who relentlessly insists she was not drunk, her husband’s lawyer who mysteriously disappeared, the cacophonous contradiction between everything Diane was known to be and this horrific event and the toxicology reports that clearly and unequivocally reported the alcohol and cannabis levels in her system. Many of us continue to desperately put our heads around what happened on that July day, but sadly, must rely on conjecture and our mostly amateur detective work.
Though there is a sliver of a silver lining for this story, and that is that Jackie Hance, the mother of the three beautiful little girls in the car with Diane that day, the little girls that never came home, has since given birth, despite having had her tubes tied, to another beautiful, and now 17-month old girl. She talks to Anne Curry in this clip from an April Today Show segment. As she says, “there is a reason.” Isn’t there always one?
madmuser 