Rissa Amen- Reif, the 22-year-old Minnesota State University student struck and killed by a car in November, was not legally drunk at the time of the accident, the State Patrol said Tuesday.
Amen Reif’s blood-alcohol content was .06, which is below the legal limit of .08.
Fellow sorority sister 21-year-old Corinne Overstake, who was with Amen-Reif and was seriously injured in the crash, had a blood-alcohol content of .09.
As for the 17-year-old driver who struck the women, the State Patrol said no drugs or alcohol was found in his system after the crash. The patrol has declined to release the driver’s identity.
The information comes shortly after Amen-Reif’s family published a blog admonishing the media for grouping her death with others that were the result of irresponsible drinking.
She died a few weeks after Amanda Jax, who died after a night of drinking in which her blood-alcohol level reached a deadly .46.
In the family’s blog, they question the media’s judgment in its reporting of Rissa’s death.
Dirk Reif, Rissa’s father, said the family posted the letter online because “our family is destroyed, my wife and two children. We are absolutely fed up with this.”
The blog states: “Why is the media speculating to implicate two young women for wrongdoing before the facts are known? It would be equally inappropriate for the media to speculate about the driver, though there’s been no such focus.
“The media has continued to cite — and sometimes misrepresent — the initial report from a Mankato city official stating that alcohol ‘may have been involved.’ Sadly the Mankato city official knew shortly after making his deceptive statement that alcohol was not a factor as far as Rissa was concerned.”
The blog didn’t name a city official, but it may have been Jerry Huettl, Mankato’s director of Public Safety, who told reporters following Amen-Reif’s death that alcohol was involved but that he wasn’t sure to what extent.
Huettl, meanwhile, says the media is guilty of inaccurately reporting what he has said about Amen-Reif’s death. He stands by his statement that “alcohol was involved,” but says published reports attributing to him the phrase “alcohol was a factor” are false. “You guys misquote terribly,” Huettl said. “The media have twisted this around to say alcohol was a factor, and no one here has ever said that.
“No matter what the (blood alcohol) would be, there’s nothing to say a person is intoxicated or not intoxicated,” he said.
On Jan. 10, Minnesota State University issued a statement urging the media to use caution when reporting on alcohol deaths and to not attribute Amen-Reif’s death to “ binge drinking.”
Media Relations Director Michael Cooper said the statement was issued after AmenReif’s father obtained the toxicology report that contained his daughter’s blood-alcohol level. The father, Cooper said, had asked for advice on dealing with media reports he thought were unfair to his daughter.
The statement read, in part: “Recent editorials and stories have prematurely concluded that Rissa’s tragic death was due to the same high-risk drinking that resulted in the October and December, 2007, deaths of two other Minnesota students. That presumption apparently is based on a police comment made one day after the accident — that alcohol may have been a factor in the accident that killed Rissa.
“This presumptive connection to binge drinking is unfair to Rissa’s legacy, and to her family and friends. It also damages the credibility of your news organization and your profession.”
According to Brown University’s Health Education Department, a female can have a blood-alcohol level of .05 to .06 at two drinks. As for what that level feels like, the center says that level can produce “feeling of warmth, relaxation, mild sedation; exaggeration of emotion and behavior; slight decrease in reaction time and in fine-muscle coordination; impaired judgment about continued drinking.”
— The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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