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Los Osos woman was intoxicated prior to fatal crash

December 2, 2014
Sabrina Hammerlund

Sabrina Hammerlund

A Los Osos woman who died after losing control of her car last month on Highway 1 was driving while heavily intoxicated, according to the CHP. [Tribune]

Sabrina Hammerlund, 24, spun her car off Highway 1 near Morro Bay either late at night on Nov. 11 or early in the morning of Nov. 12. Her vehicle rolled down an embankment and slammed into a private road, where ranchers found it rolled over around 2:40 a.m.

At the time of the crash, Hammerlund was more than four times the legal limit of .08 percent, CHP Officer Richard Lee said Monday.

Hammerlund was a graduate of Morro Bay High School who worked as a chef at Windows on the Water restaurant in Morro Bay. She previously worked as a barista in the café at the Back Bay Inn in Los Osos.

Hammerlund’s death marked the third time in a two-month span that a Los Osos woman under the age of 30 died. During that period, a Los Osos toddler and a 17-year-old Morro Bay boy also died.

With the exception of one unresolved case, each of the deaths occurred in car accidents. One of the vehicles hit a bicycle, and another crashed while the driver was under the influence of marijuana.

Lee said that five of the nine fatal accidents that have occurred in San Luis Obispo County since Oct. 1 have involved drug or alcohol impairment.


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So she was able to even function at .32 ?? and they say she was over that as well?? I cant believe anyone would let anybody even get into a car after drinking that much.. not sure if she was drinking alone or with friends.


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I bartended for some 25 years and one thing in the last 5 years or so began to bug me so much I stopped: the binge drinking of females.. and the overserving of guests. So I stopped because my conscience started to bug me and when I worked weddings and parties I was yelled at because I stopped serving people or tried to slow them down as we were trained to do. So I wonder who served this young lady that night.. thats all.. and believe me I feel for her family because Ive lost many friends the same way.


Serious things happen at a BAC of .32 and over and theyre not funny or trivial..


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If Sabrina was with “friends,” one would think and hope that at least one of those “friends” would have prevented her from getting behind the wheel of her Mazda sedan. Someone must have been aware she had way too much to drink which rendered her a total liability on any road. Or, everyone she was with was just as intoxicated as she was and had lost all concept of reality. This is not the way to lose our precious young people! :(


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A BAC of > .30 usually is the range where you will see a lack of consciousness and potential alcohol poisoning starting. However, there is a tricky little thing called “tolerance”. With 9 years sobriety, my first DUI was a .26 and I had driven over 100 miles without being detected (a fact I am entirely not proud of-and the reason I volunteer within the community [a sort of “living amends”]). As tolerance builds you see people actually still operating vehicles (and not unconscious as one would expect). This results in horrendous outcomes. Just sad. In RN school, one of the nurses that taught my clinical rotations told us a “dirty little secret” about SLO county, and that is that we have the highest fetal alcohol rate in the country. Not sure if this is fact, however, it is an issue, that is certain.


http://www.newtimesslo.com/news/2945/is-drinking-while-pregnant-a-special-problem-here/


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Good thing this drunk didn’t take out any innocent people with her bad behavior.


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“This drunk” was a talented chef and likely had alcoholism, perhaps even undetected by those around her. Your stance is that of ignorance-and ignorance has a lot to do with the lack of resolution to society’s real issues. Consult with a doctor, psychologist or registered substance abuse counselor; ask if this is “bad behavior”. I think you may be in for an educational experience.


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She (was) still a drunk, no matter how much other talent she had.


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What my friend who is a tenured professor at Stanford University calls “The Moron Factor” is very high today on this site. I need to get out of here….you just cannot get people to educate themselves on anything in this country. It is like-hand them a cheap burger and fries and let them into Walmart—and they are happy just the way things are.


I will say the same thing I said to someone else: addictions and alcoholism are NOT “bad behavior”. Ask a specialist. Not me, I am one-but go get a second opinion on this. People do not suddenly see their son as a non-innocent and a potential slaughterer when he gets a drinking problem. Nor was this young woman.


The lack of intelligence in this town makes me grit my teeth!!!


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Good points my friend. Didn’t I read (or hear in a meeting) that many veteran alcoholics cruise through their life at a .16 bac or so?


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Far Moore people are killed as a result of drug and alcohol abuse than by any abuse of firearms. Where is the public outrage?


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the excise tax on alcohol is over 15 dollars a gallon if I recall correctly


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You think that curtails achohol abuse? It just makes it more expensive to be a drunk


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“Far Moore”??


Your statistics, like your spelling, are way off. In 2011 in the United States, 32,163 people died from firearms, while 9,865 died in DUI accidents. That’s over three times more dead from firearms. Every state requires you to be 21 to have alcohol, but some states have no age limit for gun ownership. Where is your outrage about that?


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Apples and Oranges . . . he was talking about people’s behaviors not the tools they used to inflict damage. Compare total gun deaths to vehicle deaths and the tolls are roughly equal. Remove the 60+% of gun deaths that are suicides and the tolls for homicide by guns (8855 in 2012) are roughly the same as DUI deaths.


I, for one, don’t want to see either one — but the root problems in both cases are human failings such as unrestrained anger/greed in the case of gun homicides and mindless selfishness/reckless disregard for others in the case of DUI deaths.


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He was comparing abuse of “drug and alcohol” vs “firearms”, so it sounds like he is talking about the tools used to inflict damage. If you want to narrow the numbers to intentional homicides by gun, then you similarly should compare it to intentional homicides by vehicle, since the majority of vehicle deaths are not intentional.


In any case, by your own admission, the numbers are at best similar, not “far moore” as the original comment claimed. And there seems to be equal public outrage about both gun violence and drug/alcohol abuse.


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He may need a spelling lesson but you need a refresher on reading comprehension; he said substance ABUSE, not DUI accidents. Check those facts brudda.


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One of the most crushing things to see is a life ended early by drugs or alcohol. There was never the chance to realize that these substances are “not where it’s at” and enter treatment of even just quit. Again and again I see very intelligent and talented people numbing themselves in this manner. I myself marked the 9 year point in sobriety in October, and it pains me to see young lives…clipped like a bud; with no chance to blossom. Very sad.


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