Daniel Schuler cries while his sister-in-law Jay Schuler speaks at a press conference in Garden City, Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009. Schuler's wife Diane was drunk and high on marijuana when she drove the wrong way for almost two miles on a highway before smashing head-on into an SUV, killing herself and seven others, a prosecutor said. Schuler family attorney Dominic Barbara says 36-year-old Diane Schuler wasn't an alcoholic but was diabetic and may have suffered a stroke before the July 26 crash north of New York City. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
While the families of those killed in the July 26 Taconic Parkway crash planned to meet to exchange condolences, noticeably absent will be Daniel Schuler, whose wife Diane was driving drunk and impaired by marijuana when she got on the Taconic Parkway going in the wrong direction, killing her, her daughter, three nieces and three men in another vehicle.
Warren Hance, Diane Schuler’s brother, lost his three daughters in the crash and says he is angry that his brother-in-law has denied Diane was drinking and smoking pot before the crash. The New York Post reports that Hance “wants nothing to do with Daniel Schuler.”
The family of Michael and Guy Bastardi, two of the men in the vehicle that Schuler hit head on, will meet with the Hance family to console each other in the wake of the unthinkable crash. Days after the incident, an autopsy revealed that Diane Schuler had a blood alcohol content .19 and had smoked marijuana as little as 15 minutes before the crash. She called her brother, saying she was having trouble seeing. Hance told her to stay put and he would find her, but she did not listen. Her cell phone was later found at a rest stop. Shortly after the call, Schuler, who was driving the children home from an upstate campground, got on the Taconic going in the wrong direction.
Last week Daniel Schuler hired Garden City-based attorney Dominic Barbara and held a press conference, claiming his wife might have been the victim of a stroke or some other medical condition.
The Hance and Bastardi family reject that theory.
