Colleagues of dead nurse, cop struggle after fatal Cloquet crash

Colleagues of the two people killed in a head-on crash on Minnesota Highway 33 in Cloquet earlier this month are struggling to come to terms with what happened.
Longtime Community Memorial Hospital nurse Fay Dahlman, 54, of Alborn and off-duty Cloquet police officer Mark Laine, 49, of Saginaw died late on March 5 when Laine’s truck crossed the center line and hit Dahlman’s vehicle.
Test results released last week showed that Laine had a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.178 percent at the time of the crash - more than twice the legal limit.
After the crash Laine was taken to Community Memorial Hospital in Cloquet, where he was pronounced dead. Dahlman died at the scene.
Community Memorial Hospital CEO Rick Breuer said that since the crash the hospital has focused its efforts on helping those who were involved in providing care that night.
“It was an extremely stressful, nightmarish situation for everyone involved, and we want to make sure our staff gets all of the help and support they need right now,” he told the Pine Journal.
“This is obviously a huge loss for CMH and our employees, many of whom had close relationships with Fay,” Breuer said. “She was universally respected and loved, and she will be missed. As devastated as we are, we cannot imagine the pain being felt by Fay’s family.”
Laine was a Cloquet Police Department corporal and a 27-year veteran of the force.
A few hours after Laine’s blood-alcohol concentration was made public Tuesday, Cloquet Police Chief Steve Stracek spoke at a City Council meeting. He said everyone at the Police Department was still trying to wrap their heads around the loss of their longtime co-worker - and the news that he was intoxicated at the time of the crash.
“You try to understand why. There’s no excuses, no reason,” he said. “I think we’re all still pretty shell-shocked. Our folks have been trying to come to grips with the loss, and now one of our officers has impacted another family so dramatically. … As police officers we have an obligation to do the right thing for the community. Except that doesn’t always happen. We all can make bad choices.
“It’s especially sad and tragic to see others impacted the way the Dahlman family was impacted (by an accident Fay Dahlman didn’t cause),” said Stracek, who has been police chief for seven months. “I wish I had a way to express how sorry I am. I know there has been a lot of concern, prayers and thoughts from me and the whole department for them.”
Stracek said that Laine leaves behind three sons, the youngest at 17, and two older sons in their early 20s.
They lived only with their father, he said, and hope to stay on in their Cloquet home but will have to figure out how to manage that on their own at a much earlier age than most people do.
Minnesota court records show that Laine had a drunken-driving conviction in 2003, but Stracek said there had been no recent events or reasons to think Laine had a problem.
“A lot of times, there are indicators like absenteeism or poor work performance,” Stracek said. “In this case, there really wasn’t anything. Mark was a very active person in the department; the things I asked him to do were done quickly and well. He recently made some very progressive changes to our training program.”
The police department has had several gatherings since the crash, Stracek said last week - two informal “sit down and talk” sessions and a more formal “critical incident debriefing,” during which a group of professionals sat with the officers and discussed what happened.
In response to a question about whether there’s a culture at the police department that officers are immune to the laws, Stracek said he knew “the administration before me took a stance against (that kind of attitude) and were proactive to make sure officers were accountable on and off duty.
“I also expect officers to conduct themselves professionally on and off duty,” he added. “We have to follow the same rules everyone else is expected to.”