Amid Pain and Loss, a Blank Spot

The polite, accommodating man at the center of one of the grimmer tragedies to strike a California college community in recent years is the one man who can’t recall it.

And maybe that’s the only mercy to emerge from the horror of Feb. 23, 2001, when a careening car ran down five people in the Isla Vista neighborhood adjacent to UC Santa Barbara.

“The last thing I remember before the accident was the weekend before. I called Ruthie, and we had dinner,” said Bert Levy, 28. His sister, Ruth, died in the tragedy along with his best friend from high school, Elie Israel.

Levy was sitting in his father’s high-rise apartment, overlooking San Francisco’s busy financial district. Trim and clear-eyed, he looked like any other young man on the go in this energetic metropolis.

But when he rolled up his blue jeans, he revealed a patchwork of ugly scars resembling Martian canals. The deepest scar, however, is one that can’t be seen. The brain injury he suffered in the accident not only stole a chunk of his memory but required him to go through months of therapy to learn how to walk and talk again.

His next memory after the dinner with his sister is waking up in a hospital and facing a nurse asking whether he knew where he was. He guessed a bookstore. “For a long time, I thought I was on an island,” he said.

But if Levy can’t remember it, Santa Barbara--a tourist-centric town on the placid Central Coast--recalls the tragedy all too well. Thousands of people rallied and held candlelight vigils afterward to commemorate the victims and demand tighter rein on Isla Vista’s legendary party-hearty weekend bacchanals.

Brighter street lights have been installed, and the county’s grand jury recently urged law enforcement to open a drunk tank in the crowded student ghetto. Now, the civic wounds are about to bleed once more as the trial of the driver of the car opens next week.

On its face, the trial of David Attias, a slight, spiky-haired UC Santa Barbara film studies student, should be straightforward. There seems little question who was at the wheel that night. Many people say they saw Attias emerge from his Saab and bound maniacally from body to body, shouting, “I am the angel of death,” and “Ride or die.” “Angel of Death” is the name of a song by the apocalyptic metal band Slayer, while “Ride or Die” is the name of a Tupac Shakur rap album.

Because Attias has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, the central issue is whether he should be held criminally responsible for what happened that night. He faces four counts of murder, as well as four counts of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated. Besides Ruth Levy, 20, and Israel, 27, Attias is accused of killing UC Santa Barbara students Nicholas Bourdakis, 20, and Christopher Divis, 20.

Bourdakis and Divis were strolling in the street with the other three, apparently heading for one of the many parties that in the words of one victim’s mother turn Isla Vista into a “den of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll” on weekends.

Jack Earley, Attias’ attorney, denies that his client intentionally ran anyone down. “He drove by some big parties; he could have killed 50 people if he was trying,” the lawyer said.

Earley said the young man was so troubled by a long history of psychological problems that he should not be thrown in prison but be placed in a mental institution “where he can get treatment.”

Court records and interviews portray Attias as being in emotional trouble from an early age. Mental health therapy was part of the curriculum in the middle school he attended. The fact that he had been on medication was revealed in a letter from his father seized by authorities. Daniel Attias, a Hollywood film and television director, reportedly wrote of his concern that David had stopped taking his medication, yet was continuing to drive.

Suspect and His Father Had Tense Relationship

Tensions between father and son escalated to the point that just before the accident, David reportedly ranted to a dorm mate, Michera Colella, that his father was threatening to take away his car unless he started seeing a psychiatrist.

“Why are you telling me this?” Colella was thinking, she said in an interview with The Times several months ago.

The defendant’s nickname in the Francisco Torres dorm was Crazy Dave, according to friends, because of such bizarre, aggressive behavior.

Viewing a videotape of the accident’s aftermath, when David could be seen fighting with bystanders, a friend said that was typical David.

“Rather than talk things out or walk away, he would come out swinging,” Richard Ramsey told The Times.

All this points to a deeply disturbed person, but will it be enough to convince a jury that he was insane at the time of the accident? As in Texas, where Andrea Yates was recently sentenced to life in prison for drowning her five children despite suffering from severe mental illness, just being sick isn’t enough to prove insanity in California.

Earley said he must prove either that Attias did not know the difference between right and wrong or that, because of the severity of his illness, he was unable to control himself.

One thing that could make the defendant less sympathetic: allegations of drug involvement. A prosecution document says Attias “was known to sell drugs from his dorm room and openly trafficked in the sale of marijuana.”

Earley said it would not be fair to call Attias a drug dealer. “I don’t think that’s an accurate description of what was going on in the dorm,” he said.

Despite Attias’ apparent celebration at the scene of the carnage, Earley said the young man is “horribly remorseful.”

Focused on Recovering From His Injuries

To Bert Levy all these legal details seem like the sound of distant cannon fire. Something important is happening, but far away. He hasn’t been asked to testify. What could he offer? The tragedy is lost to him.

Enduring the painful surgeries, learning to walk, getting used to the idea that his sister and his best friend are gone--those are the things that have occupied his attention. He had attended law school before the accident, but he is currently taking a course toward a teaching credential.

“I’ve now recovered almost completely,” he said proudly.

Despite all he has been through, Levy’s sense of humor is intact. Referring to the loss of his sense of smell, he said he hated fish growing up. “Now it doesn’t bother me to eat it,” he said.

Still, problems remain. His conversation contains spaces where he appears to be ordering his thoughts. He sometimes has difficulty finding the right word. “I’m a little slower,” he said matter-of-factly.

But he has persevered. Those who know him best say that even with these deficits Levy has come a miraculous distance since the events of Feb. 23, 2001.

Ken Waxman, a trauma surgeon at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, was on duty the night Levy was taken in. “He was very, very critically ill, near death,” Waxman said.

Levy’s legs had been splintered like broken glass. His left wrist was broken. Several bones in his head were broken. He was in a deep coma, with his brain swelling dangerously.

He found out later just how close to death he came. A passerby who had completed CPR training just the week before leaned over Levy’s broken body at the accident scene right at the moment he stopped breathing. Performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, the stranger brought Levy back to life.

If Levy was lucky in that respect, it was a stroke of bad luck that he was in Isla Vista at all. He and Israel decided on the spur of the moment to travel from San Francisco to visit Ruth Levy in Isla Vista. Bert Levy was heading to Thailand to teach English as a second language and wanted to say goodbye to his younger sister.

“Theoretically, neither of them should have been there,” said Abby Pollak, Elie’s mother, an Oakland-based writer.

Pollak has been understandably traumatized.

“I miss him from the moment I open my eyes in the morning,” she said, sitting at the kitchen table in her house at the foot of the Oakland Hills.

Attias’ parents, Daniel and Diane, gave a tearful news conference on the courthouse steps, expressing their remorse, after their son’s first court appearance. “On behalf of my wife,” said Daniel, “I’d like to say how devastated and heartbroken we are for everyone affected by this horrible event.”

They have since declined to speak publicly, but others have spoken for them. A baby-sitter, Gina Longo, told The Times last year that the Attiases were not the dysfunctional family of Hollywood lore. They tried hard with David, she said, but he was always jittery and difficult. “They walked on eggshells,” she said. “They had more than they could handle.”

When asked how he feels about David Attias, Bert Levy shifted in his seat, nonplused. “I don’t think about him too much,” he finally said.

“My main thought is we should try to make sure our society is safer,” he said. “The last time I was in Isla Vista, I saw people speeding. That ticked me off.”