Joe Biden: Wrongly blaming the truck driver

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I wasn't aware of this story when it first came out back in 2008. No surprise to me that the news media would basically ignore it. I try and stay away from politics in this blog, there is blame enough to go around for both sides. But, this is a trucking blog and it involves an innocent truck driver. It makes me so angry, this is our Vice President! A man who can stand in front of millions of American citizens and lie through his teeth! Biden’s wife pulled out from a stop sign into the path of a trucker and she and his daughter were killed. 
That trucker was cleared of any wrongdoing and for Biden to slander him, his family and an entire industry is just disgusting!

No DUI in crash that killed Biden's 1st wife, but he's implied otherwise
By RACHEL KIPP
The News Journal  Sat, 20 Sep 2008
Since his vice presidential nomination, Joe Biden's 2007 statement that a
"guy who allegedly ... drank his lunch" and drove the truck that struck and
killed his first wife and daughter has gained national media traction.

Alcohol didn't play a role in the 1972 crash, investigators found. But as recently as last week, the syndicated TV show Inside Edition aired a clip

from 2001 of Biden describing the accident to an audience at the University
of Delaware and saying the truck driver "stopped to drink instead of drive."

The senator's statements don't jibe with news and law enforcement reports from the time, which cleared driver Curtis C. Dunn, who died in 1999, of wrongdoing.

"To see it coming from [Biden's] mouth, I just burst into tears,"
Dunn's daughter, Glasgow resident Pamela Hamill, 44, said Wednesday. "My dad was

always there for us. Now we feel like we should be there for him because
he's not here to defend himself."

Biden spokesman David Wade said Wednesday that the senator "fully accepts

the Dunn family's word that these rumors were false."

It's unclear who first suggested alcohol was a factor in the crash, but

since Barack Obama tapped Biden to be his running mate on Aug. 23, The New
York Times, National Public Radio and The Economist have run stories that
characterized Dunn as a drunken driver.

"The rumor about alcohol being involved by either party, especially the

truck driver, is incorrect," said Jerome O. Herlihy, a Delaware Superior
Court judge who was chief deputy attorney general and worked with crash
investigators in 1972.

"If it were some part of a cause of the accident, there would have been a charge, simply because if you're driving under the influence and kill

someone in the process -- whether it's the wife of a U.S. senator or anybody
else -- there's going to be a charge," he said.

Herlihy said investigators discussed several possible causes for the crash, including that Biden's first wife, Neilia, turned her head and didn't see

the oncoming truck as she exited the intersection of Limestone and Valley
roads on Dec. 18, 1972.

Neither Biden's book nor his campaign Web site directly addresses the

alcohol issue, but the senator has done so publicly on at least two
occasions.
The New York Times reported the 2007 crowd at the University of Iowa grew
silent as Biden gave his version of what happened that day.
"Let me tell you a little story," The newspaper quoted Biden as saying. "I
got elected when I was 29, and I got elected November the 7th. And on Dec.
18 of that year, my wife and three kids were Christmas shopping for a
Christmas tree. A tractor-trailer, a guy who allegedly -- and I never
pursued it -- drank his lunch instead of eating his lunch, broadsided my
family and killed my wife instantly, and killed my daughter instantly, and
hospitalized my two sons, with what were thought to be at the time
permanent, fundamental injuries."

Biden told a similar story when addressing an audience at the Bob Carpenter Center at the University of Delaware a few days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

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"It was an errant driver who stopped to drink instead of drive and hit a

tractor-trailer, hit my children and my wife and killed them," Biden said,
according to a transcript archived on his Senate Web site.

Even before Obama asked Biden to join his campaign, political observers said

the senator's gaffes could be a liability in a contest where every word will
be scrutinized. Biden's first presidential campaign 20 years ago was undone
by charges he plagiarized parts of a speech by British Labor Party leader
Neil Kinnock.

Asked about Biden's accounts of the accident, Wade warned against writing anything that would "infer, paraphrase, or be anything less than precise on such a personal and tragic subject."

After the 1972 accident, Biden never sought any records from the time of the
crash, nor did he seek any further investigation, Wade said.

"In remarks he made at the University of Iowa he said 'allegedly -- and I

never pursued it.' " Wade wrote in an e-mail. "Nor did he encourage
reporting on it then or at any other time. He has never called it or thought
of it as anything other than an 'accident.' His focus was his grief over the
loss of his wife and daughter and his concern for the recovery of his sons."
News reports from 1972 said Neilia Hunter Biden pulled away from a stop sign
at Limestone and Valley roads about 2:30 p.m. when the tractor-trailer
driven by Dunn, which was coming down a hill on Limestone Road, hit the side
of her station wagon. Dunn freed himself from the truck and was the first to
reach the Biden car, according to a report by the The Evening Journal, a
precursor to The News Journal.

Neilia Biden and 13-month-old daughter Naomi, whom the family called Amy, were declared dead at a hospital. Son Beau, now Delaware's attorney general, broke his leg, and son Hunter suffered head injuries. Joe Biden, who had been elected to his first term in the Senate just a month before, took his

oath of office at the boys' bedside.

Two days after the crash, Herlihy, a neighbor of the Bidens in the late

1960s who still considers the senator "a friend," told the paper that there
was no evidence that Dunn "was speeding, drinking or driving a truck with
faulty brakes." No criminal charges related to the crash were ever filed
against Dunn, who lived in North East, Md.

Hamill, one of seven children, was 8 years old at the time of the accident.

She remembers her father watching news reports of the crash while wearing a
sling to support a shoulder injury he suffered in the accident.

She said Dunn was always "solemn" around the Christmas holidays. Years later, when her brother planned to get married on Dec. 18, Dunn told the family "I don't celebrate on that day," Hamill said.

"We're not trying to equate Sen. Biden's loss to my father's heartache,"

Hamill said. "But we wanted it to be known that our father never forgot that
tragic day."

Hamill said it wasn't until the Inside Edition report that she became aware that the Delaware senator had said alcohol played a role in the accident.

Dunn did not consume any alcohol the day of the crash, Hamill said.
She said she immediately called Biden's office after being contacted by
Inside Edition and is waiting for the senator's response.
"The family feels these statements are both hurtful and untrue and we didn't
know where they originated from," Hamill said.

As Hamill watched a recording of the Inside Edition report Wednesday, she gasped when the clip of Biden's comments from Iowa came on screen.

After reading a News Journal account of Biden's 2001 speech at UD, Hamill
sent Biden a letter on behalf of her father. The newspaper story included
Biden's description of getting the call that his wife and daughter had died,
but not his comments about Dunn.
Hamill said her note to the senator described how Dunn was affected by the
accident.
Printed on the senator's letterhead and dated Oct. 11, 2001, the response
from Biden reads:
"I apologize for taking so long to acknowledge your thoughtful and heartfelt
note," Biden wrote. "All that I can say is I am sorry for all of us and
please know that neither I nor my sons feel any animosity whatsoever."
http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Misc/misc.transport.trucking/2008-09/msg00683.html

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