Story Changed in Drunk Driver Furor in S.D.

The high school student who reported seeing Renee Reid in a Lakeside mall while she was enrolled in an electronic surveillance program now says she spotted Reid before she entered jail Jan. 17, not after she was released, a representative of Mothers Against Drunk Driving said Friday.

Reid, a 19-year-old Lakeside woman, was sentenced to a year in jail last November for driving drunk and killing Phil Cramer, a 34-year-old bicyclist, last July. She served 31 days and was released Feb. 18 to a program in which she must stay at home unless she had a medical appointment.

The bicyclist’s widow, Lori Cramer, learned that Reid was out of jail when the student from El Capitan High School approached Bonnie Helander, a MADD volunteer, on March 11 and said she had seen Reid at the Parkway Plaza mall three weeks earlier. Cramer and Helander had been speaking at El Capitan about the consequences of drunk driving.

The student, who does not want to be identified, called Helander on Friday, saying she had been reviewing a calendar with her mother for the past few days. She and her mother concluded that, since they had been shopping for Valentine’s Day gifts before the Feb. 14 holiday, she must have seen Reid sometime before Jan. 17, the day she entered jail, she told Helander.

A spokeswoman from the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, which has assigned a detective to the case, said the investigation had ended, and Reid will remain in the home-detention program.

The informant, spokeswoman Pearl Janulewicz said, told the investigator that Helander and Cramer had misquoted her as saying she saw Reid “about two weeks ago. It was more like two months ago.”

Helander told a different story.

“She’s very confused,” Helander said of the student. “She feels badly, and she tried to come up with a date to the best of her knowledge. She feels strongly that she knew Renee was out, but may have gotten her dates mixed up.”

Helander declined to identify the girl, where she lived or her relationship to Reid.

Cramer and officers of the local MADD chapter said they are concerned because Reid was released after 31 days, not over whether she broke the terms of her probation.

The news that Reid was on electronic surveillance after being convicted of a felony that resulted in a death has prompted four days of extensive news coverage in San Diego and has been the subject of television and radio call-in shows. In addition, dozens of people have called the Sheriff’s Department to complain about what they contend is light treatment. Others have suggested that Reid received special favors because her father is a senior investigator for the district attorney’s office.

“Our main issue over this whole thing is to increase public awareness about the 31 days,” said Diane Backdahl, executive director of the San Diego County chapter of MADD. “The secondary issue is whether Renee should be returned to jail. Our issue has always been that the punishment didn’t fit the crime.”

MADD maintains that drunk driving, which involves a death, “should be treated as a homicide or a rape,” Backdahl said. “Renee made a choice to drink and drive, and she killed somebody. Drunken driving should not be a socially accepted form of homicide.”

The Reid family could not be reached for comment. Nor could the family’s attorney, who has not returned a reporter’s telephone calls this week.

Cramer said Friday that she never sought to have Reid returned to jail but is nevertheless pleased at the media attention that has served as a catalyst for MADD’s message and the problems with the electronic surveillance program.

“Let’s concern ourselves with the bigger issue right now,” she said. “Whether she was seen at a mall is such a minor part of it.”