The Escanaba Public Safety Department on Tuesday released preliminary findings from its investigation into the traffic crash last Thanksgiving night that killed two people and injured seven others, five seriously.
Police say that the driver deemed to be at-fault for the crash, Tony Hurkmans, smoked marijuana shortly before the accident, and according to a state police toxicology report, had a high level of marijuana in his system. He was driving an estimated 72 miles per hour in a 35-mile-per-hour zone when he apparently had a reaction to the marijuana. The details are in the police report below.
I think that before things are released to the public whoever is showing it to the public should consider a few things. One thing, is that there is a family several families behind some of this tragedy. Don’t you believe that those families have had enough with this horrible horrible loss? Do you really think then it’s necessary and possibly not even right or legal that you print a deceased person’s list of prescribed medications? There’s got to be better things you can put out for news and to have to try to drag people through the mud. You know that printing those things is going to make people who aren’t very educated or knowledgeable about those medications think that they’re possibly unprescribed or illegal whatever. I didn’t see anywhere that it mentioned that the driver of that car suffered greatly with non-stop migraine headaches and other things that are nobody else’s business and that just maybe that’s what those drugs were in his system for? Does anybody care about those things? And of course,the mention and make a big point of the marijuana even tho it’s legal & not truly a drug, but a plant.Or are all of you people just out there to get attention from the public? I really honestly think that you have caused much much more hury & a lot of bad feelings between people by publishing this story. And the personal side of it I don’t know all the laws of HIPPA but if a doctor’s office a Pharmacy aren’t allowed to tell someone what prescriptions a person has then I can’t see how a radio station or newspaper has the legal right to list that and print that. So next time you make a decision on printing or announcing whichever a news story maybe put yourself in that family’s place.