No Regrets

transported the couple to a small plane that would rush them to St. Luke’s Hospital in Bellingham.
    Once more, Greg Doss found himself involved in an investigation of an all-too-familiar suspect. Ruth Neslund was very upset, but she was cooperating.
    After all that had happened, Ruth Neslund was still there; it seemed as though she would always be there on Lopez Island. Sheriff Bill Cumming had also responded to the scene. “It was hot out there,” Cumming recalled later, “and two people were on the ground screaming. She wasn’t acting drunk... she had many medical problems and Deputy Doss was evidently concerned for her safety.”
    Ruth kept repeating, “I didn’t see them . . . I just didn’t see them.”
    Fearing that Ruth might actually have a stroke, Doss asked Richard Bangsund, a Lopez fire commissioner who had followed the aid unit, to drive her home. When he returned, he spoke quietly to Doss. Once she was inside his vehicle, Bangsund had noted a strong odor of alcohol coming from Ruth.
    The terms of Ruth’s probation specified that she would be supervised by the Washington State Corrections Department, travel only to adjacent counties, drive only on Lopez Island, have no firearms, maintain her residence on Lopez Island, and not use alcohol or have any new criminal charges.
    Doss figured that Ruth had just blown through the last two clauses. Doss obtained a telephonic search warrant that would allow him to administer a Breathalyzer test from Judge Bibb and contacted Ruth’s parole officer, Jack Zimmerman. At 3:43 P.M. , some four hours after the accident, she blew a .06.
    A .10 would have indicated she was intoxicated when she hit the cyclists, but human bodies metabolize alcoholat different rates, and she might well have tested at .10 four hours earlier. Given two more tests, her blood alcohol dropped remarkably to .01.
    Ruth was mystified that any alcohol at all was present in her blood. After all, she said, she had only been driving because she was on her way to Coupeville on Whidbey Island to file a brief on one of her numerous lawsuits with Superior Court Judge Howard Patrick.
    Why, she asked, would she have been so stupid as to drink when she was on her way to see a judge?
    But then Ruth had made a number of “stupid mistakes” in her explanations about where her missing husband was.
    Finally, Ruth came up with an explanation. She must have gotten hold of some orange juice that had begun to ferment. Yes, “bad orange juice” was clearly the culprit.
    It was a ridiculous excuse, and she was cited for negligent driving.
    The accident could have been worse—even fatal—but it was bad enough. Robin Lewis, twenty-three, of Chico, California, had been admitted to St. Luke’s Hospital in critical condition, suffering from a broken pelvis, a fractured skull, and a deep four-inch cut on the back of her head. Scott Battaion, twenty-nine, also of Chico, had a broken left arm, abrasions, and contusions.
    Robin Lewis was in the intensive care unit, and she stayed there as she gradually recovered to “serious” condition, and finally to “stable” on Monday, July 20.
    On that same day, Ruth Neslund was arraigned on charges of negligent driving, a misdemeanor. When she was asked if she had been drinking at the time of the accident, she drew herself up and said “Absolutely not!”
    “Do you think you should be set free?” the judge asked, and she said: “Absolutely.”
    Ruth’s new attorney, James Lobsenz, argued in a somewhat peculiar take on the situation that Ruth should not lose her driving privileges, saying: “There is absolutely no connection between the act of murder and driving negligently.”
    Perhaps not—unless one should find that each demonstrated scant respect for the well-being of others.
    And now it was obvious that Ruth herself knew that her days at Shangri-La were very close to being over. At first she said that nothing had changed, that her crash into the bicycling couple could have happened to anyone. But then she murmured, “This seems like the end of the world.”
    All of the men who had been on the prosecuting team to find some justice for Rolf Neslund and all of the sheriff’s officers felt the time had come. “Based on a recommendation by Mr. Zimmerman,” Greg Canova, commented, “because she violated her release agreement to have no alcohol, we think it appropriate for her to start her sentence now.”
    Judge Bibb seemed to concur, as he ruled that Ruth