• 18
  • August
    2011

George Maschke is on trial this week in Ohio for a drunk-driving accident that killed a 39-year-old woman named Michelle Golden. Golden had pulled over and gotten out of her car to take a picture of the sunset when Maschke hit her. It's not clear whether she died at the scene or at the hospital, but what is clear is she left behind two children.

As Mark Caudill reports for the Mansfield News Journal, Maschke testified, "I didn't feel I was under the influence."

Yet Maschke had consumed nine beers that day.

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Apparently the stress of a job interview got the best of Maschke; after the interview he blew off steam on the golf course with a friend and four beers. Then Maschke drove to visit another friend, where he consumed five more beers, for a total of nine.

Maschke then drove home, but forgot his sunglasses.

It happened on the way back to his friend's place, on County Road 37, where the lack of sunglasses and the setting sun - and probably the nine beers - led to the deadly accident.

Maschke testified, "The windshield caved in some. There was glass all over the passenger seat. My first thought was someone had launched a bottle from their car."

"I was looking right into the sun," he testified. "It was very, very difficult to see."

But Golden would have had to been standing in the middle of the lane to get hit by a passing car, unless Maschke had swerved onto the shoulder.

As Caudill reports, Maschke faces charges of vehicular homicide in connection with the drunk-driving accident, and could get up to eight years behind bars.

Source: Mansfield News Journal, "Fatal accident driver blames sun," by Mark Caudill, 08/18/11