Apotheosis
05-07-2005, 05:10 PM
This incident happend earlier this week, basically, some guy with a blood alcohol level of .44 driving an SUV killed a mother and her two children. The SUV hit her at 70 mph. The thing is, if his supervisors had a smidge of common sense and had a cab drive him home, this would not have happened.
Police: SUV driver sent home drunk from work
Farmington Hills man's personal life probed in fatal crash
May 7, 2005
BY L.L. BRASIER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Thomas Wellinger was intoxicated enough Tuesday morning at his Livonia office that his managers sent him home about 11 a.m., police said Friday. He returned to work at 3 p.m., left within minutes and killed three people 20 minutes later.
Investigators traced Wellinger's movements in the eight hours before he drove his 2005 GMC Yukon Denali 70 miles an hour along 12 Mile Road and rammed it into a 1999 Honda Accord, killing Judith Weinstein, 49, and her sons, Alexander, 12, and Samuel, 9.
Farmington Hills Police Chief Bill Dwyer said Friday sources have told his detectives that Wellinger's drunkenness Tuesday morning -- his blood-alcohol content was recorded at 0.43 percent soon after the accident -- was not an isolated incident, and that his employer had grown increasingly concerned about Wellinger's drinking on the job.
Dwyer said detectives also are looking into tips that Wellinger's employer had called him to a meeting the week before to discuss his intoxication on the job, but that Wellinger failed to attend.
Wellinger, 48, is a software account executive in the Livonia sales office of Unigraphics Solutions Inc., headquartered in Plano, Texas. Officials there declined to comment Friday.
The company was once a subsidiary of EDS Corp., but was sold last year to a group of investment firms, including Boston-based Bain Capital, which earlier this year made an offer to buy every NHL team. Unigraphics, which supplies software to the automotive, aerospace and manufacturing industries, reported more than $1 billion in revenue last year.
Dwyer said Unigraphics managers confirmed that Wellinger showed up for work about 7:30 a.m. Tuesday at the 7 Mile Road office. Police had not determined where he was between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., or whether he left then of his own accord or was sent home again.
"We still have a lot of questions," Dwyer said. "We're going to try to continue to find out what was happening in his personal life."
Wellinger's blood-alcohol content shortly after the horrific crash, which sheered off one side of the Honda and sent Samuel Weinstein hurtling at least 20 feet, was more than five times the 0.08 amount considered legally intoxicated in Michigan.
Wellinger and the Weinsteins lived in Farmington Hills.
The picture of Wellinger now emerging is of a man who, on the surface, had it all -- a prosperous career, beautiful homes, a teenage son and daughter who excelled in school. But he was a man apparently unraveling after his 25-year marriage ended in divorce last summer. He moved twice in the months after he left the family home, and he apparently began showing up for work drunk.
On Friday, Wellinger remained in stable condition at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak with spinal injuries. His attorney, Mitchell Ribitwer, said his client is expected to undergo several surgeries within weeks.
"It appears he is going to be in the hospital for some time," Ribitwer said. He said Wellinger's injuries have prevented him from communicating with his lawyer.
Ribitwer was retained by Wellinger's family members and met with them Friday afternoon. They issued their first public statement through the attorney, saying, "Our prayers and thoughts and sympathies are with the Weinstein family, and they will be in our thoughts in the days ahead."
Ribitwer declined to name the family members, but did confirm that Wellinger's elderly parents had flown to Detroit from out of state and would soon be returning home. Ribitwer said the family prayed for the Weinsteins on Thursday night.
"They are deeply saddened by what has happened," he said. Meanwhile, Ribitwer, like police, is trying to piece together what went wrong in Wellinger's life.
"I don't have the police reports," Ribitwer said. "I want to investigate the blood-alcohol results to see if they are accurate, because what I'm getting is that this was a regular guy who was a nice man, liked by his neighbors, his employer."
As the community mourned the Weinsteins in an outpouring of grief at a funeral service Friday attended by an estimated 2,000 people, Wellinger's friends also were trying to reconcile the picture of the man they know as an all-around nice person with that of the one now facing three counts of murder and a possible life sentence in prison.
"The Tom Wellinger I know is a law-abiding, fine, upstanding citizen," said Brian Aubuchon, 27, a business student at Oakland University and longtime friend of the Wellinger family. "I was never more shocked in my life when I saw his picture on television.
"I never saw him drunk," said Aubuchon, who has known the family for 10 years and last saw Wellinger about a year ago. "I know he loves his kids; he loved his wife. I don't know the circumstances surrounding the divorce, but I know it was difficult for him."
Wellinger worked with Aubuchon's father, and the two families often visited at Wellinger's vacation home on Torch Lake in northern Michigan. Aubuchon said he often golfed with Wellinger.
"He was just a really outgoing, fun-loving kind of guy," Aubuchon said. On long summer weekends, the two families would golf, swim and fish. "He was just friendly, the kind of guy who never had a bad word to say about anybody. He was not a guy who drank a lot."
Experts on addiction say Wellinger may have been a functioning alcoholic, one who drinks steadily, but not so much that obligations to job, family and home can't be met.
"They are physically addicted and drink just enough to keep from going through withdrawal," said Linda Woodward, clinical supervisor of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependency in Detroit. "Sometimes with people like that, the drinking isn't noticeable after a while. We have a saying, 'I didn't know he drank until I saw him sober.' "
Woodward said functioning alcoholics can be successful in life. But they also run the risk of a complete loss of control.
"To have a blood-alcohol level of 0.43 means he would have had to have had a real high tolerance," she said. "Otherwise, he would have been unconscious."
Contact L.L. BRASIER at 248-858-2262 or brasier@freepress.com. Staff writers Jewel Gopwani and Joe Swickard contributed to this report.
Police: SUV driver sent home drunk from work
Farmington Hills man's personal life probed in fatal crash
May 7, 2005
BY L.L. BRASIER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Thomas Wellinger was intoxicated enough Tuesday morning at his Livonia office that his managers sent him home about 11 a.m., police said Friday. He returned to work at 3 p.m., left within minutes and killed three people 20 minutes later.
Investigators traced Wellinger's movements in the eight hours before he drove his 2005 GMC Yukon Denali 70 miles an hour along 12 Mile Road and rammed it into a 1999 Honda Accord, killing Judith Weinstein, 49, and her sons, Alexander, 12, and Samuel, 9.
Farmington Hills Police Chief Bill Dwyer said Friday sources have told his detectives that Wellinger's drunkenness Tuesday morning -- his blood-alcohol content was recorded at 0.43 percent soon after the accident -- was not an isolated incident, and that his employer had grown increasingly concerned about Wellinger's drinking on the job.
Dwyer said detectives also are looking into tips that Wellinger's employer had called him to a meeting the week before to discuss his intoxication on the job, but that Wellinger failed to attend.
Wellinger, 48, is a software account executive in the Livonia sales office of Unigraphics Solutions Inc., headquartered in Plano, Texas. Officials there declined to comment Friday.
The company was once a subsidiary of EDS Corp., but was sold last year to a group of investment firms, including Boston-based Bain Capital, which earlier this year made an offer to buy every NHL team. Unigraphics, which supplies software to the automotive, aerospace and manufacturing industries, reported more than $1 billion in revenue last year.
Dwyer said Unigraphics managers confirmed that Wellinger showed up for work about 7:30 a.m. Tuesday at the 7 Mile Road office. Police had not determined where he was between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., or whether he left then of his own accord or was sent home again.
"We still have a lot of questions," Dwyer said. "We're going to try to continue to find out what was happening in his personal life."
Wellinger's blood-alcohol content shortly after the horrific crash, which sheered off one side of the Honda and sent Samuel Weinstein hurtling at least 20 feet, was more than five times the 0.08 amount considered legally intoxicated in Michigan.
Wellinger and the Weinsteins lived in Farmington Hills.
The picture of Wellinger now emerging is of a man who, on the surface, had it all -- a prosperous career, beautiful homes, a teenage son and daughter who excelled in school. But he was a man apparently unraveling after his 25-year marriage ended in divorce last summer. He moved twice in the months after he left the family home, and he apparently began showing up for work drunk.
On Friday, Wellinger remained in stable condition at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak with spinal injuries. His attorney, Mitchell Ribitwer, said his client is expected to undergo several surgeries within weeks.
"It appears he is going to be in the hospital for some time," Ribitwer said. He said Wellinger's injuries have prevented him from communicating with his lawyer.
Ribitwer was retained by Wellinger's family members and met with them Friday afternoon. They issued their first public statement through the attorney, saying, "Our prayers and thoughts and sympathies are with the Weinstein family, and they will be in our thoughts in the days ahead."
Ribitwer declined to name the family members, but did confirm that Wellinger's elderly parents had flown to Detroit from out of state and would soon be returning home. Ribitwer said the family prayed for the Weinsteins on Thursday night.
"They are deeply saddened by what has happened," he said. Meanwhile, Ribitwer, like police, is trying to piece together what went wrong in Wellinger's life.
"I don't have the police reports," Ribitwer said. "I want to investigate the blood-alcohol results to see if they are accurate, because what I'm getting is that this was a regular guy who was a nice man, liked by his neighbors, his employer."
As the community mourned the Weinsteins in an outpouring of grief at a funeral service Friday attended by an estimated 2,000 people, Wellinger's friends also were trying to reconcile the picture of the man they know as an all-around nice person with that of the one now facing three counts of murder and a possible life sentence in prison.
"The Tom Wellinger I know is a law-abiding, fine, upstanding citizen," said Brian Aubuchon, 27, a business student at Oakland University and longtime friend of the Wellinger family. "I was never more shocked in my life when I saw his picture on television.
"I never saw him drunk," said Aubuchon, who has known the family for 10 years and last saw Wellinger about a year ago. "I know he loves his kids; he loved his wife. I don't know the circumstances surrounding the divorce, but I know it was difficult for him."
Wellinger worked with Aubuchon's father, and the two families often visited at Wellinger's vacation home on Torch Lake in northern Michigan. Aubuchon said he often golfed with Wellinger.
"He was just a really outgoing, fun-loving kind of guy," Aubuchon said. On long summer weekends, the two families would golf, swim and fish. "He was just friendly, the kind of guy who never had a bad word to say about anybody. He was not a guy who drank a lot."
Experts on addiction say Wellinger may have been a functioning alcoholic, one who drinks steadily, but not so much that obligations to job, family and home can't be met.
"They are physically addicted and drink just enough to keep from going through withdrawal," said Linda Woodward, clinical supervisor of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependency in Detroit. "Sometimes with people like that, the drinking isn't noticeable after a while. We have a saying, 'I didn't know he drank until I saw him sober.' "
Woodward said functioning alcoholics can be successful in life. But they also run the risk of a complete loss of control.
"To have a blood-alcohol level of 0.43 means he would have had to have had a real high tolerance," she said. "Otherwise, he would have been unconscious."
Contact L.L. BRASIER at 248-858-2262 or brasier@freepress.com. Staff writers Jewel Gopwani and Joe Swickard contributed to this report.