Jury selection for four accused in girl's death starts today
DETROIT (AP) - Samantha Reid’s
mother remembers the time when her
daughter, at age 10, saved her allowance
for weeks to throw her a surprise birth
day party, even inviting 30 friends she
found in her mom’s address book.
Judi Clark recalls how even as a
teen-ager, Samantha would meet her at
the door each night and ask about her
day at work.
The last memory she has of her
daughter is from a year ago, when
Samantha, at 15, lay comatose, poi
soned by the “date-rape drug” GHB,
and doctors said it was time to let her go.
“They said ‘We keep bringing her
back, and she keeps dying. We’ve
brought her back three times, and she’s
died three times. How many times do
you want to let her keep dying?”’ says
Clark, her voice quaking.
GHB - gamma-hydroxybutyrate -
is an odorless and nearly tasteless drug
linked to at least 58 deaths and more
than 5,700 overdoses nationwide since
1990.
Public sales are banned by the Food
and Drug Administration.
Today, in one of the nation’s first tri
als resulting from a GHB-related death,
jury selection begins for the manslaugh
ter trial of four men accused of slipping
the drug into Samantha’s soft drink at a
party.
Authorities say young people often
believe that GHB and other “club
drugs” aren’t “real drugs” like cocaine,
or they take them unknowingly as
Samantha did. Recipes and ingredients
- some of them common household
products - are easily available from the
Internet and other sources.
“A lot of people who use them
believe they are benign drugs and don’t
see them for what they are -taken under
some circumstances, life-threatening,”
says Alan Leshner, director of the
National Institute on Drug Abuse.
From the start, Samantha was on the
go. “Hammy Sammy,” they called the
attention-craving youngster even before
her first birthday.
“If there was no action happening,
she’d make it happen,” her mother says.
Allowances often went to help pay
her friends’ way into movies. She
befriended children who others
ridiculed.
“She loved to make other people
happy,” Clark says. “She was there for
the underdog.”
Mother and daughter talked often
and openly.
“I told her about people slipping
stuff into drinks, but it was never some
thing I harped on because she was only
15,” Clark says.
“When you think of Rohypnol
(another date-rape drug), you think of
bars. You never dream, my God, it’s
going to happen to a 15-year-old.”
In January 1999, Samantha, two
friends and four guys they’d just met
went to a party on Grosse lie, an affluent
island community in the Detroit River.
Samantha was handed a soft drink,
and moments later she was vomiting
and unconscious.
t .
On the Rise
Emergency: hospital visits related to gamma-hydro*ybutyrate, more commonly
knowo:%#«&t*repe dru§||ive rocketed nationallyiMd 29 In 1992
to&pgtfeMK Ste
>• aamma-hydrokj^utyrate^-GHB, is an odorless and nearly tasteless.
ft..*rug. * -f : ||§J, -T-.v
.i; ft has been linked to more, than 58 deaths and more than 5,700
|§|1 overdoses since 1990. ^ A? vV-i •• ;?',»3fr
;.GHB is hard, to trace and is often, out of the body within 24 hours
♦ It can make users feel euphoric, tt can also lead to breathing
: problems, seizures, Ibhg-term brain effects, coma and death,
A person wfio. drinks a. soda laced with a few .drops of GHB
:: Cfth loss con sc i o u $ ne s s within 2tt':.minutes-aod. have no
1 memory of what happened. * > *
Source: The Associated Press
Her best friend, then 14, drank what
she believed to be orange juice and
vodka, felt herself “getting drunk pretty
quick” and also lost consciousness. The
third girl escaped serious effects.
An attorney for one of the defen
dants says his client spiked the drinks
with what he believed was only a harm
less intoxicant. Two other defendants
say they were unaware <3HB was even
present.
The fourth says he was gone or in
his bedroom most of the night the girls
were drugged.
GHB, originally developed as a sur
gical anesthetic, is sometimes used as an
aphrodisiac, or a weight loss aid, or by
body builders as a supplement. It’s hard
to trace, often out of the body within 24
hours.
Delan Lonowski/DN
It can make users feel euphoric. It
also can lead to breathing problems,
seizures, long-term effects on the brain,
coma and death.
“This has become the upscale,
inclusive social-scene thing to do,” says
Arthur Dean of the Community Anti
Drug Coalitions of America.
A person who drinks a soda laced
with a few drops of GHB can lose con
sciousness within 20 minutes and have
no memory of what happened, hence its
reputation as a “date-rape drug” used to
render women helpless against sexual
advances.
GHB-related hospital emergency
visits have rocketed nationally from 20
in 1992 to 1,283 in 1998, according to
the Drug Abuse Warning Network.
Dartmouth students apathetic about nrimaries
The Dartmouth
Dartmouth College
HANOVER, N.H. (U-WIRE)
-Despite the national media coverage
of the New Hampshire primary and vis
its by many Oval Office hopefuls to
Hanover, most students contacted by
The Dartmouth said they were not
closely following the race.
With the strategic importance of
this state’s primary, Dartmouth students
have been able to see most of the major
contenders during campaign visits to
Hanover, with the notable exception of
Republican frontrunner Texas Gov.
George W. Bush.
However, many students inter
viewed said they were not impressed by
JL
the political show and have not had
much personal involvement with the
campaigns.
Of the 30 students interviewed,
only two were planning to vote in one
of the upcoming presidential primaries.
“This is an average presidential
election, and there are a sorry lot of
candidates,” freshman Constantine
Vetoshev said.
“Politics isn’t my thing,” said one
sophomore. “In fact, who exactly is
[Democratic contender and former
Senator] Bill Bradley?”
Still most students said they
planned to vote in the national elections
in November and predicted that, most
likely, the presidential race would be
between Democrat Vice President A1
Gore awl Bush. f ’
In the short run, most students pre
dicted that New Hampshire
Republicans would vote for Bush,
while state Democrats would nominate
Gore.
“Bush and Gore have name recog
nition,” junior Allison Lange said,
adding that they were both most likely
to win the actual party nomination.
“Gore is competent and hasn’t real
ly made any major mistakes. The
Democrats aren’t going to deprive him
what they see as his right,” sophomore
Allison Schumitsch said.
Other students said Bush’s
immense fundraising success and his
recent win at the Iowa caucus would
give him the edge. • ~
Only brie student predicted a pri
mary result that was not a Bush victory.
“[Arizona Senator John] McCain
has visibility and dedication and com
mitment to New Hampshire,” senior
Mark Stein said. However, Stein said,
the national Republican nominee will
still be Bush, v !
In October, the College played host
to the first major debates of the primary
season - one night featured the
Democratic contenders Gore and
Bradley, while the next evening,
McCain, Sen. Orrin Hatch of (R-Utah),
former Ambassador Alan Keyes, pub
lisher Steve Forbes and former Reagan
administration official Gary Bauer
took the stage for the Republican
debate.
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Nel3raskan
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THE DAILY NEBRASKAN
j AIDS-related death rate
high among US. priests
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP)
-Roman Catholic priests in the
United States are dying from AIDS
related illnesses at a rate four limes
higher than the general population
and the cause is often concealed on
their death certificates, The Kansas
City Star reported Sunday.
The newspaper said death cer
tificates and interviews with Experts
indicated several hundred priests
have died of AIDS-related Illnesses
since the mid-1980s and hundreds
more are living with HIV, the virus*
that causes the disease. >
“I think this speaks tea failure on
the part of the church,,s said
Auxiliary Bishop ^ Thomas
Gumbleton of the Archdiocese of
Detroit. “Gay priests andTieterosex
ual priests didn’t know hmy to han
• die their sexuality, their sextia[drive.
And so they would handle it ih» ways
that were not healthy.” ' ^ -
The Star received 80J responses
to questionnaires that were sent last
fall to 3,000 of the 46,00u priests in
> the United States. The margin of
error of the survey was 3.5 percent
age points.
Six of 10 priests responding said
they knew of at .least one priest who
had died of an AiDS-related illness,
and one-third knew a priest living
With AIDS. Three-fourths said the
church needed to provide more edu
cation to seminarians on sexual
issues.
“How to be celibate and to be gay
at the same time, and how to be celi
bate and heterosexual at the same
time, that’s what we were never real
ly taught how to do. And that was a
major failing,” Gumbleton said.
Asked about their sexual orienta
tion, 75 percent said they were het
erosexual, 15 percent said they were
homosexual, and 5 percent said they
were bisexual.
The Star said precise numbers of
ppests who have died of AIDS or
become; infected with HIV is
unknown, partly because many suf
fer insolitude. When priests tell their
superiors, the" cases generally are.
handled quietly. - * > :
■ China
U.S. entrepreneur declared
brain dead after beating
.SAN JOSE, Calif.' (AP) - A
Silicon Valley entrepreneur visiting
Beijing for a high-tech conference
sponsored by the Chinese govern
ment was declared brain dead after he
was severely beaten and left uncon
scious in a bar, relatives say.
Family members told the San Jose
Mercury News that Steven Leung,
chairman of Mountain View-based
Scenix and the president of Santa
Clara-based Emvix Communications
Inc., was found unconscious with a
head wound on Jan. 18 in a karaoke
bar several hours after the conference.
Leung, a resident of San Jose and
the father of three, is now being treat
ed in a Hong Kong hospital.
■ Ivory Coast
Kenya Airways jet crashes into
the sea, at least 9 survive
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) - A
Kenya Airways jet carrying 169 pas
sengers and 10 crew members
crashed Sunday night into the sea,
shortly after taking off from Abidjan,
airport officials said.
At least nine people survived the
crash.
The plane, an Airbus 310, took off
at 9:08 p.m., and crashed just one
minute later, according to George
Dapre Yao, the head of air traffic at
Abidjan’s Felix Houphouet-Boigny
Airport.
The plane, which was en route to
Lagos, Nigeria, carried 167 adult pas
sengers and two children, Yao said.
■ Chicago
Governor blocks executions
during investigation
CHICAGO (AP) -— Illinois has
seen more of its death sentences over
turned than it has carried out, so Gov.
George Ryan plans to block execu
tions altogether pending a special
investigation, the Chicago Tribune
reported Sunday.
The decision, to be announced
today, would make Illinois the first
state in the country to stop executions
while it reviews its death penalty pro
cedures, the newspaper reported.
Ryan will create a special panel to
study the state’s capital punishment
system in general and determine what
happened in the 13 cases in which
men were wrongly convicted since
Illinois reinstated the death penalty in
1977.
Of the 38 death penalty states,
only Nebraska has taken a similar
step. But after the Nebraska
Legislature passed a moratorium last
year, the governor vetoed it
■ Boston
Online gambling increases
during Super Bowl Sunday
BOSTON (AP) - Whether gam
8biers placed their money on the St.
Louis Rams or the Tennessee Titans,
growing numbers of them made their
wagers online.
Cyberspace wagering oh
Sunday^ Super Bowl was expected to
more than double this year, compared
to last, to as much as $50 million, said
Jonathan Ader, who monitors the
gaming industry for Bear^Stearns 3l
Co.
That’s a pittance compared to the
total amount of legal and illegal bets
on Sunday’s contest, which is predict
ed to come in at between $50 billion
and $100 billion.