Blizzard trial off to swift, gruesome start

The attorney defending Erica Blizzard, 36, against charges that she is criminally responsible for the death of a close friend when she crashed her boat onto the ledges off Diamond Island on Lake Winnipesaukee on Father's Day 2008 is apparently hoping to convince the jury that Blizzard was not intoxicated when the accident occurred.

In his opening arguments at the start of Blizzard’s trail in Belknap County Superior Court yesterday, county prosecutor Jim Carroll said Blizzard’s blood alcohol level at the time of the 2 a.m. crash was .12-percent — or about one-and-a-half times the legal limit of .08-percent.

Still Concord attorney James Moir said that when all the evidence is in the jury will find, “There isn’t a crime here. There’s an accident. There’s a tragic accident.”

The first day of the trial moved fairly swiftly, with the jury going to see Blizzard’s wrecked 37-foot Formula power boat (valued at approximately $300,0000), opening arguments presented by both sides and several witnesses testifying — including local doctor Tom Rock.

Rock and his wife own a seasonal home on Diamond Island and were the first ones on the scene after the accident.

Rock testified he and his wife, Nancy Stone, were asleep on the night in question when, around 2 a.m. a loud sound woke them suddenly. Although the pair were somewhat frightened, especially given the darkness of the night and a rainstorm that was slowly intensifying, they made their way outside using large flashlights and eventually found the location where the boat was — partially on the rocks and partially still submerged in the lake.

“It looked like the boat had hit the ledge and bounced back about 15-to-20 feet into the water,” Rock said under Carroll’s questioning. “At that point it was about already under about five or six feet of water. The boat was sitting and sinking.”

The husband and wife called 911 on their cell phones and Rock started to make his way out to the boat in a small dingy he owned. When he got aboard, he could see several people but he was particularly concerned that there might be someone else involved he could not see.

When Rock got on the boat he saw Nichole Shinopulos, one of the three women involved in the mishap, walking in circles around the boat deck, acting “verbal, hysterical and confused,” Rock said.

“She kept trying to crawl out. I kept telling her to sit down in the boat. I could see one person on the dash of the boat and I knew there may be others on the boat,” he said.

“I was most distressed if anyone else was in the water. She (Nichole) said no — so then I went to each of the others, Stephanie (Beaudoin) and Erica,” the doctor reported. “One (Erica) was on the dash. She had crawled out of three-feet of water and slid on the dash, on her side. She had massive facial injuries but was groaning and had a good pulse. She didn’t seem to have any life threatening injuries… She just needed to get somewhere (where she could be treated) fast.”

However Stephanie Beaudoin had her right foot trapped in a crack in the floor, Rock said.

“I checked her pulse. She had no pulse. I checked her for breathing. She was not moving. And as I checked her I noticed that her neck was quite floppy.”

When Rock indicated on his cell phone to EMTs on their way to the crash that there may be a fatality at the scene, he said Shinopulos became very upset. He started performing CPR on Beaudoin and had her friend help to help calm her down. “Save her! Save her!” Rock reported Shinopulos shouting.

“But I recognized that there no air was moving into her lungs and I assumed she had serious head and neck injuries,” he said.

When attorney Moir had the chance to cross-examine Rock, he asked him about how difficult it was for a boater to find their way around portions of Winnipesaukee, especially on a night the doctor said offered “no contrast.”

Rock admitted his missed his own island a few times on dark nights although he’s made the trip there hundreds of times.

Rock also gave more details about Blizzard’s apparent injuries at the accident scene, saying she had a broken jaw and was “critically injured.

“It was very dangerous but on her side she was quite safe… Otherwise with all her facial fractures her face would have just collapsed,” he explained. “The soft tissue could have made it harder to breath.”

In his opening statement, Carroll gave a detailed description of the accident, as authorities understood it.

He said the three young women were drinking and dining at a bar-restaurant in Wolfeboro for several hours before leaving in the boat that brought them to the home of Blizzard’s father on Winnipesaukee in Laconia. There the trio engaged in an annual prank Blizzard had been playing on her dad every Father’s Day; this year, they put up signs promoting “Snowy Blizzard for Sheriff.”

Then the three got back into the boat and headed south to Sleepers Island where they planned to spend the night together.

Carroll said that Blizzard is charged with alternative theories of causing her friend’s death — either by boating while intoxicated or by failing to keep proper lookout. He said her attorney would ask the jury to find that it was “merely a tragic accident. (But) the state will present to you evidence that it was a criminal act.”

At the Marine Patrol building on Rte. 106 in Belmont earlier in the day, the jury got a first-hand look at the large black-and-white boat. The front appeared to be bent up at a 35-degree angle and a chunk of the bow about seven-feet long was completed ripped off the boat. In addition, Carroll pointed out places where the two high-powered engines had apparently been ripped from the fiberglass boat.

The trial is expected to resume this morning at 9:30 a.m.