Accused Driver Admits Having Up to 19 Beers

A Lancaster man accused of killing four people in 1986 while driving the wrong way on the Ventura Freeway testified Tuesday that he consumed as many as 19 beers during about seven hours before the accident.

Daniel E. Murray, 27, testified that because of the amount of alcohol he consumed, he has no recollection of the crash. He said he first realized that he had been in an accident when someone came up to talk to him as he sat in the passenger side of his pickup truck on the Ventura Freeway.

“I figured I was in a wreck because my truck was smashed up,” Murray said Tuesday in Van Nuys Superior Court, where he is being tried before a jury on charges of second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter and felony drunk driving. The trial is before Judge Kathryne Ann Stoltz.

Murray, arrested after the Dec. 11 crash, testified that he assumed that he had simply hit the freeway’s center divider until the next morning, when County Jail deputies showed him a newspaper account of the crash.

“I started crying when I realized what had happened,” Murray said in a level voice as his wife, sister, parents and grandmother watched.

Murray said he drank up to 19 beers between 2:45 p.m., when he got off work, and the 10 p.m. accident in which Suzanne Brown, 37; her son, Jonah, 7; her father, Jack Rawls, 69, and Dia Rae Rounds, 16, all of Ventura, were killed.

Murray’s pickup truck was eastbound in the westbound lanes of the freeway near Liberty Canyon Road in Agoura when it collided head-on with a car driven by Brown, a Ventura High School teacher.

Brown’s son, Jamaal, testified Thursday that he came upon the crash scene while riding home on a bus with fellow members of the Buena High School basketball team. Jamaal’s family and Rounds, his girlfriend, had attended the basketball game in Beverly Hills earlier that night and were on their way home when the accident occurred.

The day of the crash, Murray said he had about three beers and no food for lunch, then consumed an estimated 10 to 12 beers at an office party about 5 p.m. After the party, Murray testified that he drank one or two beers purchased from a convenience store with friends and then about five more beers at a Christmas tree lot before setting out for home.

About an hour after the crash, Murray had a blood-alcohol level of 0.19%, nearly twice the state’s legal limit.

Murray testified that although he attended drunk-driving awareness courses after being convicted of drunk driving twice in 1979 and reckless driving while intoxicated in 1982, he never considered himself to have a drinking problem.

Under questioning from one of his attorneys, Murray said he now sees “every time I was ever in trouble, it had something to do with alcohol.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Phillip H. Rabichow, the prosecutor in the case, contends that Murray knew he had a drinking problem but displayed a conscious disregard for human life when he got behind the wheel that December day.

Murray’s lawyers contend that Murray was too drunk to realize what he was doing. In addition, they contend that a head injury Murray suffered at age 13 caused permanent brain damage that magnified the effects of the alcohol and drugs.