Dangers of binge drinking continue
By the time the rainy night stretched into early morning, Samantha Spady had been drinking and partying for hours.
First it was beer and shots of tequila. Now, inside a fraternity house in Fort Collins, Colo., she was swilling vanilla vodka straight from the bottle.
The binge went on for 11 hours. When it was over, the Colorado State student who grew up in Beatrice had a blood-alcohol level more than five times the legal driving limit. She was stumbling, unable to stand on her own.
Two students wrapped the 19-year-old's limp arms around their necks and walked her to a forgotten fraternity room full of extra furniture, empty beer bottles and the glow of a black light.
They laid her on a couch, and a few minutes later, Sam blinked her eyes and nodded as the last person left the room.
She just needs to sleep it off, her friends thought.
n n n
Samantha Spady grew up in Beatrice, where her father owned a car dealership and everyone knew her.
It was hard not to. Senior class president. Head cheerleader. Honor student. Homecoming queen.
Almost perfect.
On weekends, she and her friends would head to the country to hang out and sometimes drink beer. But Sam never drank to get drunk, said her best friend from high school, Kelleigh Doyle.
After graduation, she moved to Fort Collins. With 127,000 people, it was just big enough for the girl from a small town. She loved the college town with its quaint downtown shops and tree-lined neighborhoods. In the fall, streets fill with amber and chestnut leaves that crackle when students stroll to class in the Colorado chill.
The sophomore business major had a lot of new friends in Fort Collins. She made friends quickly, something her mother had always admired about her, the way people were drawn to her.
Sam had pledged Chi Omega sorority as a freshman, but it took up a lot of time. She had trouble balancing sorority functions with school work and dropped out by her second semester.
In a journal she kept for health class, she talked about how much she missed her family and home-cooked meals.
Mirna Guerra hadn't known Sam that long when the two decided to get together Sept. 4, the Saturday before Labor Day and the evening of the big Colorado State-Colorado football game.
Sam picked up Mirna, a freshman, just before 6 p.m., and they went to a house to watch the game. Sam drank a beer, downed two shots of tequila, ate a hot dog and some chips and dip. They left two hours later.
They watched the rest of the game at another house, where Sam drank a few beers from a supersize cup before they left around 10:30.
Friends told police Sam had been out partying the past three nights, which was not unusual. Sometimes, they said, she vomited and later passed out.
"It's what everyone does," said her roommate, Sara Gibson. "Some people party every night."
That's not unusual for some college students. Away from parents, often for the first time, they can come and go as they please and are free to experiment with alcohol.
Parties come on the fly, and there's never a shortage of kegs to tap. In pubs and bars near campus, drinks are cheap, and women often drink free. All-you-can-drink nights for $5 a pop are common.
All of that is an invitation for binge drinking, said Henry Wechsler, director of College Alcohol Studies at the Harvard School of Public Health.
"They're without parental supervision. They're at a period of life when they explore and experiment," he said.
Nationally, 44 percent of college students report binge drinking — five drinks in a row for men, four for women — at least once in the previous two weeks. Half of those students do it more than once a week.
While the percentage of binge drinkers has stayed about the same over the past 11 years, the amount they drink in one sitting has increased, Wechsler said. Members of fraternities and sororities tend to drink more than other students.
Nationally, there are more than 1,400 alcohol-related deaths among college students each year, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Most die in traffic accidents.
n n n
The night Samantha Spady died, it was raining hard and she was having a hard time seeing through her windshield. She hit a median and ended up with two flat tires.
Upset and unsure what to do, Sam called her parents. No answer.
But Sam and Mirna still wanted to find a good party. They soon did.
For about two hours, they drank and danced to Michael Jackson. Sam drank four or five cups of beer. She may have played drinking games.
"By then, we had started drinking pretty fast," Mirna said.
Still, Sam seemed fine, she said. She and Mirna were having fun, talking about music they liked and possibly rooming together next year.
Around 2:30 a.m., they were at the Sigma Pi house, a place Sam felt comfortable. She had lots of friends in the fraternity and had dated a few members. Some considered her a little sister.
"She always made people smile," said Sigma Pi President Darren Pettapiece.
About 25 people were at the fraternity house, hanging out in the hallway or drinking and talking in rooms.
"You could kind of tell she was drunk, but you couldn't tell how drunk," said Matthew Kilby, a student at Colorado Northwestern Community College in Rangely who was there that night.
Gibson, 19, and another one of Sam's roommates also were there for a while. They knew Sam was drunk, but they had seen her worse.
"I was like, ‘Come back with me,'" Gibson said. "She looked me in the face, saying, ‘I want to stay.'"
Another beer later, and Sam and Mirna were hanging out in one of the bedrooms, listening to the rock band Dispatch with other students. By then just a few people were still awake in the house. Around 4 a.m., Sam and Mirna were drinking swigs of Sam's favorite drink — vanilla vodka. They'd put the bottles to their lips and tilt their heads back as the room echoed: "Go, go, go!"
n n n
Minutes later, Sam was sitting on the front stoop, resting her head on her elbows.
She fell backward and her head hung down. She didn't respond when friends spoke to her.
"When did you get so drunk?" Mirna asked.
Unresponsive. Incoherent.
She should have been taken to a hospital then, said Dr. Charles Lieber, an expert in alcohol metabolism at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
Around 5 a.m., Sigma Pi member Baylor Ferrier and a friend helped Sam upstairs and put her on a couch in an unused room they called "Le Boom Boom." Ferrier had dated Sam the previous semester and says he had seen her worse. He thought she just wanted to sleep.
"It didn't seem like a big deal at all," he said.
Mirna stayed with Sam for half an hour, urging her to walk back to her dorm room with her. She tried to help Sam stand, but Sam swayed and then fell over, so Mirna put her on another couch.
"She was going in and out of it. I would wake her up and clap," Mirna said.
Sam opened her eyes but couldn't speak well. She nodded her head. Mirna thought she just wanted to sleep and would be fine.
But the homecoming queen with the megawatt smile was dying.
By then, Lieber said, she was likely in a coma, her brain cells asleep, her respiration slow. If she had gotten medical help, he said, even that late she might have lived. But there was no help in the Sigma Pi storeroom.
Soon after Mirna left, Samantha Spady took her last breath.
As Sunday dawned and the glint of orange crept through the mountains, Sam's cell phone started ringing.
"Sam Bam, you were so drunk last night," Mirna's message began.
Her mother, Patty Spady, called, then waited. She called again. Still no Sam. She tried not to worry, but it was unlike her daughter not to call back.
Sam's roommates tried to reach her too, calling Sigma Pi members to ask if anyone had seen her.
At Sam's house near campus, Gibson had a bad feeling.
n n n
Almost 13 hours after Sam had been left to sleep it off, a fraternity member was giving his mother a tour of the house, which was littered with beer bottles and cans. Panties and bras hung from the entryway chandelier. A stripper pole was in one room.
When he opened the door to the social room that had been stuffed with extra couches, he saw Sam's body, clad in jeans and a yellow T-shirt. Her long blonde hair was pulled back. Her knees were on the floor, her face resting on a foam cushion. Her arms were outstretched to each side, almost like she was crawling.
It looked like she was sleeping.
"Hello," he said. "Hello?"
He touched her leg. It was cold and stiff.
Sam Spady had a blood alcohol level of 0.436 percent. The coroner said it probably had been higher, that her body would have continued to metabolize alcohol while she was unconscious.
Since her death, the parties continue in Fort Collins, the booze still flows.
But the Sigma Pi house has been shut down. Fraternities have banned alcohol, and alcohol sales are banned inside the football stadium. Nineteen people were cited for alcohol-related offenses as part of the investigation into Sam's death.
"It's not so much that we have a problem," Sigma Pi member Matthew Dunn said. "It's more that we have a few people who make the wrong decision. Sometimes young people don't know how to handle alcohol."
Four other alcohol-related deaths have occurred on Colorado campuses alone this fall. Three students at colleges in Oklahoma, Arkansas and New Mexico died after drinking with their fraternity brothers recently.
"It's not just the students on that campus. It's not just the faculty. It's not just the bar owners. Everybody in the community has a responsibility for some changes to take place," Patty Spady said.
Mirna Guerra and other friends who were with Sam that night still party.
But they also remember Sam, and they wonder how she could have drank enough to die that night — and they didn't know it.
"I was thinking, ‘Why didn't I stay with her?'" Mirna said. "Why didn't I know something was wrong?"
Angie Wagner is the Associated Press' Western regional writer, based in Las Vegas. This story is based on the Fort Collins police report, the Larimer County coroner's report and interviews with Patty Spady, Mirna Guerra, Sara Gibson, Baylor Ferrier, Matthew Kilby and Sigma Pi fraternity members.
First it was beer and shots of tequila. Now, inside a fraternity house in Fort Collins, Colo., she was swilling vanilla vodka straight from the bottle.
The binge went on for 11 hours. When it was over, the Colorado State student who grew up in Beatrice had a blood-alcohol level more than five times the legal driving limit. She was stumbling, unable to stand on her own.
Two students wrapped the 19-year-old's limp arms around their necks and walked her to a forgotten fraternity room full of extra furniture, empty beer bottles and the glow of a black light.
They laid her on a couch, and a few minutes later, Sam blinked her eyes and nodded as the last person left the room.
She just needs to sleep it off, her friends thought.
n n n
Samantha Spady grew up in Beatrice, where her father owned a car dealership and everyone knew her.
It was hard not to. Senior class president. Head cheerleader. Honor student. Homecoming queen.
Almost perfect.
On weekends, she and her friends would head to the country to hang out and sometimes drink beer. But Sam never drank to get drunk, said her best friend from high school, Kelleigh Doyle.
After graduation, she moved to Fort Collins. With 127,000 people, it was just big enough for the girl from a small town. She loved the college town with its quaint downtown shops and tree-lined neighborhoods. In the fall, streets fill with amber and chestnut leaves that crackle when students stroll to class in the Colorado chill.
The sophomore business major had a lot of new friends in Fort Collins. She made friends quickly, something her mother had always admired about her, the way people were drawn to her.
Sam had pledged Chi Omega sorority as a freshman, but it took up a lot of time. She had trouble balancing sorority functions with school work and dropped out by her second semester.
In a journal she kept for health class, she talked about how much she missed her family and home-cooked meals.
Mirna Guerra hadn't known Sam that long when the two decided to get together Sept. 4, the Saturday before Labor Day and the evening of the big Colorado State-Colorado football game.
Sam picked up Mirna, a freshman, just before 6 p.m., and they went to a house to watch the game. Sam drank a beer, downed two shots of tequila, ate a hot dog and some chips and dip. They left two hours later.
They watched the rest of the game at another house, where Sam drank a few beers from a supersize cup before they left around 10:30.
Friends told police Sam had been out partying the past three nights, which was not unusual. Sometimes, they said, she vomited and later passed out.
"It's what everyone does," said her roommate, Sara Gibson. "Some people party every night."
That's not unusual for some college students. Away from parents, often for the first time, they can come and go as they please and are free to experiment with alcohol.
Parties come on the fly, and there's never a shortage of kegs to tap. In pubs and bars near campus, drinks are cheap, and women often drink free. All-you-can-drink nights for $5 a pop are common.
All of that is an invitation for binge drinking, said Henry Wechsler, director of College Alcohol Studies at the Harvard School of Public Health.
"They're without parental supervision. They're at a period of life when they explore and experiment," he said.
Nationally, 44 percent of college students report binge drinking — five drinks in a row for men, four for women — at least once in the previous two weeks. Half of those students do it more than once a week.
While the percentage of binge drinkers has stayed about the same over the past 11 years, the amount they drink in one sitting has increased, Wechsler said. Members of fraternities and sororities tend to drink more than other students.
Nationally, there are more than 1,400 alcohol-related deaths among college students each year, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Most die in traffic accidents.
n n n
The night Samantha Spady died, it was raining hard and she was having a hard time seeing through her windshield. She hit a median and ended up with two flat tires.
Upset and unsure what to do, Sam called her parents. No answer.
But Sam and Mirna still wanted to find a good party. They soon did.
For about two hours, they drank and danced to Michael Jackson. Sam drank four or five cups of beer. She may have played drinking games.
"By then, we had started drinking pretty fast," Mirna said.
Still, Sam seemed fine, she said. She and Mirna were having fun, talking about music they liked and possibly rooming together next year.
Around 2:30 a.m., they were at the Sigma Pi house, a place Sam felt comfortable. She had lots of friends in the fraternity and had dated a few members. Some considered her a little sister.
"She always made people smile," said Sigma Pi President Darren Pettapiece.
About 25 people were at the fraternity house, hanging out in the hallway or drinking and talking in rooms.
"You could kind of tell she was drunk, but you couldn't tell how drunk," said Matthew Kilby, a student at Colorado Northwestern Community College in Rangely who was there that night.
Gibson, 19, and another one of Sam's roommates also were there for a while. They knew Sam was drunk, but they had seen her worse.
"I was like, ‘Come back with me,'" Gibson said. "She looked me in the face, saying, ‘I want to stay.'"
Another beer later, and Sam and Mirna were hanging out in one of the bedrooms, listening to the rock band Dispatch with other students. By then just a few people were still awake in the house. Around 4 a.m., Sam and Mirna were drinking swigs of Sam's favorite drink — vanilla vodka. They'd put the bottles to their lips and tilt their heads back as the room echoed: "Go, go, go!"
n n n
Minutes later, Sam was sitting on the front stoop, resting her head on her elbows.
She fell backward and her head hung down. She didn't respond when friends spoke to her.
"When did you get so drunk?" Mirna asked.
Unresponsive. Incoherent.
She should have been taken to a hospital then, said Dr. Charles Lieber, an expert in alcohol metabolism at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
Around 5 a.m., Sigma Pi member Baylor Ferrier and a friend helped Sam upstairs and put her on a couch in an unused room they called "Le Boom Boom." Ferrier had dated Sam the previous semester and says he had seen her worse. He thought she just wanted to sleep.
"It didn't seem like a big deal at all," he said.
Mirna stayed with Sam for half an hour, urging her to walk back to her dorm room with her. She tried to help Sam stand, but Sam swayed and then fell over, so Mirna put her on another couch.
"She was going in and out of it. I would wake her up and clap," Mirna said.
Sam opened her eyes but couldn't speak well. She nodded her head. Mirna thought she just wanted to sleep and would be fine.
But the homecoming queen with the megawatt smile was dying.
By then, Lieber said, she was likely in a coma, her brain cells asleep, her respiration slow. If she had gotten medical help, he said, even that late she might have lived. But there was no help in the Sigma Pi storeroom.
Soon after Mirna left, Samantha Spady took her last breath.
As Sunday dawned and the glint of orange crept through the mountains, Sam's cell phone started ringing.
"Sam Bam, you were so drunk last night," Mirna's message began.
Her mother, Patty Spady, called, then waited. She called again. Still no Sam. She tried not to worry, but it was unlike her daughter not to call back.
Sam's roommates tried to reach her too, calling Sigma Pi members to ask if anyone had seen her.
At Sam's house near campus, Gibson had a bad feeling.
n n n
Almost 13 hours after Sam had been left to sleep it off, a fraternity member was giving his mother a tour of the house, which was littered with beer bottles and cans. Panties and bras hung from the entryway chandelier. A stripper pole was in one room.
When he opened the door to the social room that had been stuffed with extra couches, he saw Sam's body, clad in jeans and a yellow T-shirt. Her long blonde hair was pulled back. Her knees were on the floor, her face resting on a foam cushion. Her arms were outstretched to each side, almost like she was crawling.
It looked like she was sleeping.
"Hello," he said. "Hello?"
He touched her leg. It was cold and stiff.
Sam Spady had a blood alcohol level of 0.436 percent. The coroner said it probably had been higher, that her body would have continued to metabolize alcohol while she was unconscious.
Since her death, the parties continue in Fort Collins, the booze still flows.
But the Sigma Pi house has been shut down. Fraternities have banned alcohol, and alcohol sales are banned inside the football stadium. Nineteen people were cited for alcohol-related offenses as part of the investigation into Sam's death.
"It's not so much that we have a problem," Sigma Pi member Matthew Dunn said. "It's more that we have a few people who make the wrong decision. Sometimes young people don't know how to handle alcohol."
Four other alcohol-related deaths have occurred on Colorado campuses alone this fall. Three students at colleges in Oklahoma, Arkansas and New Mexico died after drinking with their fraternity brothers recently.
"It's not just the students on that campus. It's not just the faculty. It's not just the bar owners. Everybody in the community has a responsibility for some changes to take place," Patty Spady said.
Mirna Guerra and other friends who were with Sam that night still party.
But they also remember Sam, and they wonder how she could have drank enough to die that night — and they didn't know it.
"I was thinking, ‘Why didn't I stay with her?'" Mirna said. "Why didn't I know something was wrong?"
Angie Wagner is the Associated Press' Western regional writer, based in Las Vegas. This story is based on the Fort Collins police report, the Larimer County coroner's report and interviews with Patty Spady, Mirna Guerra, Sara Gibson, Baylor Ferrier, Matthew Kilby and Sigma Pi fraternity members.
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