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Friends Talk About Crash That Killed Randy Salerno

Snowmobiling Accident In North Woods Claimed CBS 2 Morning Anchor's Life In January

CHICAGO (CBS) ― On January 24 our friend and CBS 2 news anchor Randy Salerno was taken from us in a horrible snowmobiling accident. More pieces are coming together on exactly what happened on that fateful night.

New information is emerging from the investigation into the crash. Some of his friends who went along on that trip with him spoke with CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine.

We all agree that there is no excuse, explanation or justification for operating a motor vehicle while impaired by alcohol or drugs, ever.

With that thought in mind, those who were with Salerno and Scott Hirschey, on that snowmobile trip tonight for the first time are raising other troubling issues about the crash.

It is a tragedy that has drawn a tight-knit community even closer, on a trip Salerno and Brian Priesz had been looking forward to for weeks. You could see that on their faces as they prepared to fly to northern Wisconsin.

After landing Salerno and Priesz posed again, with Mike Braun, who piloted the plane, as the three prepared to join the rest of their group for what they hoped would be a weekend of snowmobiling in an area known as the snowmobiling capital of the Midwest.

Just hours later, what was meant to be an excellent adventure in the North Woods came to a horrifying end.

"We saw the sled so you knew it was something serious cause it's in a tree and Randy isn't moving," said Salerno's friend Jim Demetrio.

As Demetrio tells it they were on their way home after dinner in a town called Boulder Junction and a rest stop in Sayner, Wis., to break up a two-hour trip in below zero temperatures.

As they left Sayner Pub, after what the group and bartenders swear was a single cocktail each, Hirschey found his snowmobile battery dead, and he hitched a ride with Salerno.

"He was on the back to start with, so somehow they switched," Demetrio said.

They should have gone south from Sayner toward St. Germain, where they were staying. But instead they took a wrong turn and headed northeast across Plum Lake, and crashed.

"My first reaction was he must have hit the tree with his head cause he's unconscious, he's gonna wake up but he's unconscious, maybe wind knocked out of him. But he was out," Demetrio said.

Hirschey was catapulted through the branches of a tree. They found him unconscious, without a pulse.

"For all intents and purposes, Scott was gone and I think Mike brought him back," Demetrio said.

Salerno had no pulse, and Braun started CPR. Jim went for help, back across the lake. He returned minutes later with paramedics, and saw Hirschey sitting on a snowmobile.

"He was screaming 'I killed my friend, I killed my friend,' and I said 'no, you didn't, no, you didn't, he's gonna be OK,' 'cause I saw someone else sitting over Randy talking to him, and that's when Mike told me, no, he's gone," Demetrio said.

Hirschey first declined to take a breathalyzer; later at the hospital, his blood alcohol level was .225, nearly three times the legal limit. A second sample CBS 2 learned came back lower: .183, but still twice the legal limit.

"I'm not gonna sit here and defend just to defend, I'm gonna tell you what happened," Demetrio said. "We were all shocked when we saw the numbers, we said, no way no way."

Salerno's friends say none of the group, which had been together all day, saw Hirschey drinking excessively or displaying any sign of impairment.

"When I look at what happened I see all the other aspects of what happened, the cold, the conditions, the poorly marked trail entrance off the lake, no barrels, no light," Demetrio said.

"The fact that there was a 250-pound guy on back that makes the front of the sled stand up. The drinking part never entered my mind because it just wasn't that way," he said.

Pictures taken by the group and video taken by CBS 2 of the entrance to the trail show the left trail marker very clearly, with the warning sign and yellow diamond. The right-hand marker is further back and partly obscured by a fallen tree.

"When he came upon that trail and didn't see the markers guiding him in, it must have been a shock to him too," Demetrio said. "You don't have to be impaired to be surprised."

E-mail to CBS 2 expresses an outpouring of sympathy for Salerno's family, but little for Scott Hirschey.

"I would expect this reaction. All I know is we've talked about this, we all have our guilt, everyone of us is saying 'Could I have stopped it? How could I have prevented it?'" Demetrio said.

One of Salerno's friends told CBS 2 the investigating officer taking his statement began with the question, "So what time did you start drinking heavily at that bar?" A question that, to them, implied the investigation was over before it began.

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