Alcohol killing children

RONAN, Mont. — When 11-year-olds Frankie Nicolai III and Justin Benoist turned up dead in a snowy field after guzzling huge amounts of vodka, it fell on Lake County Sheriff Bill Barron to retrieve the boys' frozen bodies.

For Barron, the unpleasant task was compounded by a too-similar incident just three months earlier when Justin's older brother, 14-year-old Tyler Benoist, was found drunk and dead in a burned trailer on another part of the Flathead Indian Reservation.

Tyler died of smoke inhalation. His kid brother, with a blood-alcohol level of 0.20 percent, died of alcohol poisoning and hypothermia. Frankie, whose body was in the field about 100 yards from Justin's, died of alcohol poisoning, his blood-alcohol level a lethal 0.50 percent — more than six times the level defining drunken driving in Montana.

The deaths, two in this community of 2,800 and the other a few miles away in Pablo, have people searching for explanations. The seemingly senseless loss of the three young American Indians also has intensified the spotlight on alcohol abuse in Indian Country.

The alcohol-related death rate for Indians is about seven times the U.S. rate for all races combined, according to the federal Indian Health Service. But residents, educators and law enforcement authorities say the deaths of Justin and Frankie cannot be blamed on any one thing — and especially not on a stereotype of Indian life.

"It was a breakdown of everything — the families, the school, the community," customer Heather Davies said as some coffee regulars gathered at the New Moon Cafe in Polson, the county seat on the southern shore of Flathead Lake, north of Ronan.

Underage drinking is a problem throughout society, said Steve Wing, a policy analyst for the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in Rockville, Md.

"Some parents just don't realize how dangerous it can be," Wing said.

In Montana, a statewide survey of seventh- and eighth-graders last year by the state Office of Public Instruction found 15 percent said they had been binge drinking in the previous month. Sixty-one percent said they'd had a drink at some time in their lives.

Next month, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Scholastic publishing company will send packets of information to school kids across the nation, intended to discourage them from drinking. The packets are designed for fifth-graders, children a year younger than Justin and Frankie.