Freeway Death Trial Hinges on Legal Point

Opening arguments are scheduled to begin Monday in the trial of a woman who is charged with vehicular manslaughter while she was drunk, even though she was not driving the car that killed the victim.

Although attorneys for both sides agree on most of the facts, the case turns on a legal question: Can 25-year-old Dana Lowry be held accountable for the death of a 19-year-old Oceanside man who was helping Lowry on the side of the road when he was struck by a third driver?

Last Aug. 16, Lowry was driving drunk alone when she entered Interstate 15 near Fallbrook, going northbound in the southbound lanes, attorneys for both prosecution and defense said.

She sideswiped a parked truck as she was halfway down an off-ramp, they said, and continued to drive more than 200 feet on the freeway against traffic. She finally came to rest in the No. 2 lane of the freeway, her headlights shining in the direction of oncoming traffic.

Lowry, who was dressed in white clothing, then got out of her car and began to wave her arms, according to witnesses. Thomas Anderlik stopped his car on the side of the interstate and went over to help Lowry, but was killed when a car crashed into him, pinning him against Lowry’s car.

More than two hours after the accident, the Sheriff’s Department tested Lowry’s blood alcohol level at .25%, more than three times the legal limit.

The prosecutor says Lowry is criminally liable for Anderlik’s death because she was a “substantial factor” in it.

“She presented white lights to oncoming traffic. She did not present taillights or had activated her flashers, and she had not pulled over to the median or to the shoulder,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Walter Donovan said.

“The state of the law of California is that she is liable or culpable if she was a ‘substantial factor’ in the death or injury, and she certainly was.”

Lowry’s attorney, Thomas Warwick, said that, although Lowry should not have driven down the freeway in the wrong direction and stopped in the middle of the interstate, that does not mean that she Lowry is responsible for Anderlik’s death.

“If the first act did not cause the death, and the second act is not foreseeable, then you are not responsible for an unforeseeable second act,” Warwich said.

Take two men arguing, Warwick said: If the first man pushes the second out onto the sidewalk, and at the same time a safe falls out of a window and falls on the second man, the first man is not responsible for the second man’s death.

The prosecution, however, argued that Lowry’s negligent driving led Anderlik onto the freeway.

“Danger invites rescue, and this particular good Samaritan stopped to help her, and, had it not been him, likely some other citizen would have come along,” Donovan said.

As for it being “unforeseeable” that a car would crash into someone coming to Lowry’s aide, “nothing is more foreseeable than cars coming down a freeway,” Donovan said.

Warwick agreed, but added that “it is also foreseeable that the drivers will act responsibly.”

Warwick points out that at least a half dozen other drivers either stopped or slowed down and drove around Lowry’s car, and says that Henry Preiss of Ramona, who was driving the car that killed Anderlik, should have done the same. Preiss was not cited in the accident.

Lowry’s headlights could be seen from more than a mile away according to a video re-enactment of the incident developed by the defense, Warwick said.

However, Donovan said the drivers who stopped or slowed down for Lowry all had different positions and saw the situation differently than Preiss, who was driving in the same lane as Lowry’s stopped car.

Donovan also said Lowry’s car had only one working headlight, and that the position of Anderlik’s body showed that he was standing in front of it when he was struck by Preiss, possibly blocking Preiss’ view of the car.

If convicted, Lowry, who had been arrested twice previously for driving under the influence of alcohol, could be sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Lowry’s father, David Lowry, is a real estate developer in Fallbrook who in 1989 tried to get his 1,600-acre site to be considered for a North County landfill. David Lowry also headed the Beach Boys America boating syndicate, which hoped to contend for the America’s Cup in 1992 but failed because of lack of money.

There is legal precedent for the Lowry case. The first case in California of a drunk driver convicted of a vehicular crime although not behind the wheel took place in 1988 on the same freeway, in almost the same place as the Lowry accident. The California 4th District Court of Appeals ruled on the case in 1990, and it is being appealed to the state Supreme Court.