Jessica Savitch, October 24, 1983

I was only three years old, so I missed the media sensation over the tragic, watery death of NBC News Correspondent Jessica Savitch in Solebury Township.

From Wikipedia:

Savitch was born in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, about thirty-five miles from Philadelphia. She attended Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York, where she worked at the campus radio and TV stations and at WBBF, an AM outlet in Rochester. After graduating in the spring of 1968, Savitch worked at various radio and TV stations, including WCBS in New York and KHOU in Houston.

    She then became a popular local television newscaster at KYW, the former NBC affiliate (now CBS) in Philadelphia, and a Washington correspondent for NBC News. Thanks to her screen presence and attractive style, she was eventually promoted to the news anchor of the weekend NBC Nightly News, and she also anchored Frontline on PBS. Her autobiography, Anchorwoman, was published in 1982.

    On Sunday, October 23, 1983, Savitch had dinner with Martin Fischbein, vice-president of the New York Post, in New Hope, Pennsylvania. After the meal at Odette’s Restaurant, they began to drive home about 7:15 pm, with Fischbein behind the wheel and Savitch in the back seat with her dog, Chewy.

    Fischbein may have missed posted warning signs in a heavy rainfall, and he drove out of the wrong exit from the restaurant and up the towpath of the old Pennsylvania Canal’s Delaware Division on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River. The car veered too far to the left and went over the edge into the shallow water of the canal. After falling approximately fifteen feet and landing upside down, the station wagon sank into deep mud which sealed the doors shut.

Savitch and Fischbein were trapped inside as water poured in. A local resident found the wreck at about 11:30 that night. Fischbein’s body was still strapped behind the wheel, with Savitch and her dog in the rear.

After the subsequent autopsies, the Bucks County coroner ruled that both had died from asphyxiation by drowning. He noted that Fischbein was apparently knocked unconscious in the wreck but Savitch had struggled to escape. There was no finding that drugs or alcohol had played any part in the crash.

October 24, 1983: Frank DeLuca of the New Hope Police Department stands by the accident site on the Delaware Canal.

In April 1984, Arthur L. Raynes, an attorney for Savitch’s estate, filed suit against eight parties, including the state Department of Environmental Resources; Odette’s Restaurant and its owner, Frank C. Csaszar; and John Nyari, owner of the property next to the restaurant.

Six years previously, in May 1977, an eerily similar accident had occurred. Caron Ehehalt, 52, left Odette’s and headed north from the parking lot. His car was found the next morning upside down in the adjacent canal in about five feet of water. The body of Ehehalt, father of five children, was inside.

In March 1978, Ehehalt’s widow, Christine, filed a lawsuit in county court claiming negligence on the part of both the state and the restaurant. A jury found the state to be 70 percent responsible for the accent, Odette’s 20 percent, and Ehehalt 10 percent, and awarded Ms. Ehehalt $1.7 million.

A 1977 police sketch of the accident scene. Click the image for a larger view.

In 1988 an out-of-court settlement was reached between Savitch’s estate and the defendants. Reports put a price tag on the agreement at more than $8 million.

 New Hope police Chief Walter J. Everett examines the smashed windshield of the car in which Ms. Savitch and Fischbein were trapped.