14 DAY TRIAL // Shortly after word got out that Ryan Dunn and a fellow passenger were killed in a one-vehicle crash, esteemed film critic Roger Ebert tweeted about it, assuming Dunn had been drinking before it happened. He’s now apologizing for it.
As we also informed you yesterday, after reading online reports about how Dunn had been downing beers and shots just hours before the crash, Ebert assumed that he died because he’d been drunk driving.
So, he tweeted “Friends don’t let jackasses drink and drive,” sending Twitter into a frenzy, as outraged fans of the famous MTV show Dunn was on claimed this was no time for “sick” jokes.
The fact is, Ebert writes on his official blog, he didn’t even try to make a joke about it. Granted, his tweet came too soon, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t true.
“To begin with, I offer my sympathy to Ryan Dunn’s family and friends, and to those of Zachary Hartwell, who also died in the crash. I mean that sincerely,” the film critics writes.
“It is tragic to lose a loved one. I also regret that my tweet about the event was considered cruel. It was not intended as cruel. It was intended as true,” Ebert adds.
Still, he admits he rushed to conclude that Dunn was drunk at the time of the crash, even if he had no sure way of knowing it.
“I have no way of knowing if Ryan Dunn was drunk at the time of his death. What I knew before posting my tweet was that not long before his death, he posted a photo on Tumbler showing himself drinking with two friends,” Roger explains.
He understands why Dunn’s good friend and co-star Bam Margera was so offended by the tweet, and he also understands why people took offense – but if Dunn did drink and drive, he was at fault and said fault cost him his life.
“I don’t know what happened in this case, and I was probably too quick to tweet. That was unseemly. I do know that nobody has any business driving on a public highway at 110 mph, as some estimated – or fast enough, anyway, to leave a highway and fly through 40 yards of trees before crashing,” Ebert writes.
The first findings at the scene of the crash indicate that Dunn may have actually been going at 130 MPH.
“That is especially true if the driver has had three shots and three beers. Two people were killed. What if the car had crashed into another car?” Ebert asks.