Frozen daiquiris are available to customers who order from the drive-through window at Cajun Liquor.
By Henrietta Wildsmith, Shreveport Times
About an hour after an accident killed one of his passengers and left another paralyzed, Robert Casey Kirk registered a blood alcohol content of .20 — more than twice the legal limit for driving.
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By Henrietta Wildsmith, Shreveport Times
Nicole Brettillo serves frozen daiquiris to customers through the drive-through window at Cajun Liquor in Shreveport, Louisiana.
By Henrietta Wildsmith, Shreveport Times
Nicole Brettillo serves frozen daiquiris to customers through the drive-through window at Cajun Liquor in Shreveport, Louisiana.
Some of that alcohol — investigators found 109 opened and unopened beer cans at the crash scene — was purchased at a Longview, Texas, drive-through convenience store, Gregg County, Texas, district court filings show.
Texas, like Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Tennessee and other states, allows drive-through sales of packaged alcohol, such as beer and wine. There are no precise numbers on how many states allow the practice, as it is usually left to individual municipalities. John Bowersox of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism did point to a 2004 New Mexico study that found 23 states allowed some drive-up or drive-through liquor sales.
Owners defend the practice, but concern about possible resulting drunken driving crashes and deaths is prompting efforts to outlaw drive-up liquor stores.
•In Rantoul, Ill., a ban on drive-up alcohol sales went into effect May 1.
•Waterloo, Iowa, council members will review in August a zoning revision designed to limit businesses selling alcohol and eliminate new drive-up liquor stores in four neighborhood.
•A 2011 effort to allow drive-through beer and daiquiri sales in Slidell, La., never made it for a vote after the mayor asked the City Council to let the proposal die.
A 1998 New Mexico study of arrested drunken drivers found many preferred to buy their alcohol from drive-up liquor stores, says the study's principal investigator, Sandra Lapham, director of the Behavioral Health Research Center of the Southwest in Albuquerque. New Mexico banned drive-through alcohol sales the same year that study was released.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., proposed an amendment to the 1998 federal transportation bill that would have banned the practice nationwide, but the effort failed.
"We do know and research has shown that alcohol availability is related to higher rates of alcohol-related crashes," Lapham said.
Allegations about crash
Shortly before the Jan. 8, 2009, Gregg County crash, an already drunken Kirk drove through Don's Fly-Thru Beer Barn and bought a 30-pack of beer for the second time that day without ever leaving his truck, according to allegations in a Gregg County lawsuit filed on behalf of two crash victims.
Kirk then picked up Sarah Marie Hill, who had just finished her shift at an Applebee's restaurant and was friends with another passenger, Josh Harrington. Less than a half-hour later, Hill was dead and Harrington was severely injured, the court documents show.
By Henrietta Wildsmith, Shreveport Times
Louisiana law allows drivers to buy ready-to-drink frozen alcoholic drinks from their cars without breaking the state’s open container law.
Kirk, now 25, was convicted of intoxicated manslaughter and sentenced in 2010 to 18 years in prison. Kirk was also convicted of intoxication assault, for which he received 10 years in prison.
"You would pull up in the truck and they would pass the beer through the window … you never would have to get out of your vehicle," said Jerome Tefteller, a Gilmer, Texas, attorney representing Harrington and Hill's family in a civil suit seeking unspecified damages.
Stephen R. Patterson, a Longview lawyer hired by Talley Oil Co. Inc., owner of the Beer Barn at the time of the crash, says Don's did not break Texas law by selling beer to an obviously drunken customer. The company answered the complaint, denying all allegations. Blame for the fatal crash belonged to Kirk and also to his passengers, who chose to ride with a drunken driver, Patterson says. Speaking through Patterson, Talley Oil Co. Inc. President Don Talley declined to be interviewed for this story. Talley sold the Beer Barn about a year after the crash.
The legal line on sales
Louisiana law, in addition to permitting packaged liquor sales, allows drivers to buy ready-to-drink frozen alcoholic drinks — made with rum, vodka, tequila or other alcohol with concentrations as high as 190-proof — from their cars without breaking the state's open container law. A violation only occurs if the driver or a passenger removes the lid on the drink, puts a straw through the lid hole or removes part or all of the contents, state law says.
Shreveport, La., drive-up liquor store owner Mike Holland says his employees are responsible — informing customers of applicable open container laws, carefully checking IDs to safe guard against purchases by minors, and refusing service to those already impaired.
"Somebody who is intent on drinking and driving is going to do it no matter how they get (the alcohol)," said Holland, who owns four liquor related businesses including two drive-up daiquiri stores.
Nationwide, 10,228 people died in 2010 in crashes involving drivers who had a blood-alcohol content of .08 — the legal limit — or higher. Those deaths accounted for 31% of the nation's traffic deaths that year, according to data released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in December.
Jan Withers, Mothers Against Drunk Driving national president, says drive-through alcohol sales — ready-to-drink or packaged wine, beer or liquor — are a gateway to drunken driving and underage drinking.
"It gives the opportunity for many more people to be on the road driving impaired," said Withers, of Maryland, whose 15-year-old daughter Alisa Joy was killed in 1992 by an underage drunken driver.
Brian Dobbins, vice-president of Eskimo Hut, a Texas-based drive-through daiquiri business with 23 company-owned and franchise stores from Amarillo to Houston, counters that those drunken drivers aren't his customers.
"We are a family atmosphere store that is trying to give a product to people that don't want to go to the bar," said Dobbins, whose company also offers non-alcoholic versions of its drinks.
Contributing: Bath also reports for The (Shreveport, La.) Times
