Why were the bartender and waitress not arrested for serving a drunk who killed two teenagers in a wrong-way crash?
Shortly before 3 a.m. June 29, 2012, Nicole Baukus, 23, drove south in the northbound lanes of Interstate 45 in Montgomery Count, Texas, crashing her Ford F-150 pickup truck head-on into another vehicle. Two teenagers in the car were killed and another passenger critically injured. Baukus had just left the On the Rox Sports Bar and Grille in Woodlands, a suburb of Houston. An hour after the deadly wreck, her blood alcohol level was .286, more than three times the legal limit.
Baukus had consumed 17 shots and 4 beers in about four-and-a-half hours at the bar - from 9:19 p.m. through 1:46 a.m.. Surveillance videos clearly show her having a great time consuming all those drinks, staggering badly around inside the bar and later outside in the parking lot as she left to get into her truck.
Baukus is currently on trial, charged with two counts of second-degree felony manslaughter and one count of third-degree intoxication assault. She faces up to 50 years in prison if convicted on all three charges.
In April, the bar’s insurance carrier made a settlement of $1 million dollars to be split evenly between the injured passenger and the families of the two dead teens.
My question is, why did the authorities fail to arrest the bartender and the waitress who served a visibly drunken Baukus? It’s against the law for bar employees to serve a drunk. On the Rox and its employees are just as responsible for the deaths of the two teenagers as is Baukus.
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