1972 crash still haunts driver's family
No DUI in crash that killed Biden's 1st wife, but he's implied otherwise
By RACHEL KIPP • The News Journal • September 4, 2008
Delaware Online
EXCERPT: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.
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KEY POINT:
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.
Not only was Mr Dunn NOT drunk, he was CLEARED OF WRONGDOING. Biden feels free to slander the memory of a dead man.
Trying to exploit the death of his wife and child is bad enough, doing so by slandering a dead man? Stay Classy, Joe...
