Minneapolis Personal Injury Blog

IntoxBox, a touch-screen machine that contains a breathalyzer is now available to use in six Twin Cities bars for customer use. Locations include Fabulous Fern’s Bar and Grill and Shamrock’s in St. Pul, Cowboy Jack’s and Senser’s in Bloomington, the Park Tavern in St. Louis Park and the Cabooze Bar in Minneapolis.

Intoxbox is produced by the Eden Prarie based Walden Innovative Resources.  The machine is intended to allow customers pay two dollars to breathe into a disposable straw and provides them a result of their blood alcohol concentration.  According to Ryan Walden, the inventor of the Intoxobox, is to make customers aware of what their blood alcohol concentration is before they drive home.  In a recent interview Walden stated that, “You have a speedometer in your car to help you obey the speed limit, yet we’re expected to obey the drinking and driving laws without access to a tool that is supposed to help us obey the law.”

Jeremiah Wall of Albertville, Minnesota was killed on July 10, 2011 while fleeing from a Hennepin County Sheriff on a DWI stop.  It was unclear as to whether the Hennepin County Sheriff who was involved in the initial traffic stop was chasing Wall at the time he sped through a red light at the intersection of 93rd Avenue North in Maple Grove and struck another vehicle on the driver’s door, killing the unidentified driver of the victim vehicle.

A study release on October 21, 2010 by the Centers for Disease Control (http//www.cdc.gov/mmwr/PDR/wk/mm594.pdf) reports that fatal motor vehicle crashes in the United States involving 16 and 17 year old drivers decreased by 36 percent from 2004 to 2008.  In Minnesota the percentage change was even greater in that the decrease was 53 percent; 47 fatalities in 2004 compared to 22 in 2008.  Authorities believe that changing social attitudes and education emphasizing the dangers of drinking alcohol and driving as well as the importance of wearing seat belts are significant factors behind the reduction in fatal car accidents.

A recent Minnesota State Patrol survey determined that 58 percent of teen drivers involved in fatal vehicle accidents were not wearing seat belts and 66 percent of teen passengers killed in car accidents were not wearing seat belts.

The CDC study was published in conjunction with National Teen Driver Safety Week (October 17-23).   The CDC emphasizes that continuing youth education needs to be emphasized because one out of every three teen deaths involves motor vehicle accidents.  The “Parents Are the Key” campaign (http://www.cdc.gov/parentsarethekey) points to the role that parents play in protecting their children.

Pointing to new DNA evidence, a lawyer is asking Stearns County in Minnesota to dismiss charges against a man accused in a deadly drunk driving car accident because tests now appear to show the passenger in his vehicle was driving the GMC Hummer SUV that killed a 19-year old last summer.

Timothy Rausch, 30, told authorities at the scene of the the deadly car crash that he swerved on County Road 17 to avoid a deer before hitting and killing Ryan DeZurik on August 16, 2009.  Rausch, and his passenger, Eugene Rivetts, were outside of the GMC Hummer before the investigating police officers arrived to investigate.

Rausch, who had no previous criminal record, had a blood alcohol level of .346 and was charged with vehicular homicide.   Rivetts has a lenghty criminal history and the Hummer was registered to this wife.

Rausch’s lawyer, Tim Beito, stated that blood and human tissue samples from the deployed airbag show that Rivetts was driving the Hummer at the time of the collision.  Rivetts has not been charged, but Assistant Stearns County Attorney Will Brost said that “We are engaged in conversations to get this resolved.”

According to Beito’s motion, a detective who obtained a search warrant “reveals that his own belief is that Eugene Rivetts, not Timothy Rausch, was the actual driver of the vehicle.”

Ryan DeZurik was driving home from his grocery store job in St. Cloud, just a few minutes from his home in Holdingford, when the Hummer rand over his 1990 Toyota Corolla and was instantly killed him. His mother, Sherrie DeZurik, said that she believed all along that Rivetts was driving.

“We’re willing to be patient and this confirms what we’ve already suspected,” she said.