Bishop accused in cyclist’s death ...

By Michelle Boorstein
WashingtPost
February 02, 2015

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/bishop-accused-in-biker-death-appeared-drunk-during-her-own-installation-celebration-this-fall/2015/02/02/9bb8c5f0-ab4f-11e4-abe8-e1ef60ca26de_story.html

Bishop Heather Cook, Maryland's second-highest ranking Episcopal leader and the first female bishop in her diocese, was charged with drunken driving and manslaughter after fatally striking a cyclist.

Bishop accused in cyclist’s death suspected of being drunk at installation festivities

The bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland suspected that Heather Cook — now charged in the drunken-driving death of a Baltimore bicyclist — was drunk during her installation festivities this past fall, a new official timeline shows.

Officials with the diocese, which elected Cook its first female bishop last spring, have said for weeks that they knew before her election of a drunken-driving incident in 2010. However, they have declined to answer questions about whether they had any reason to be concerned about her drinking after she was elected — until the fatal accident in December.

The timeline, which the Diocese of Maryland said Monday it had added to its Web site, says the head of the national Episcopal Church was made aware that Cook may have been drunk during her installation celebration. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori was the leader of the Sept. 6 service that consecrated Cook, or made her a bishop.

Bishop Eugene Sutton — who oversees Episcopalians in much of Maryland aside from the D.C. suburbs — suspected Cook was “inebriated during pre-consecration dinner,” the timeline says, “and conveys concern to Presiding Bishop. Presiding Bishop indicates she will discuss with Cook. Cook consecrated.”

The timeline says Bishop Clay Matthews, who works in the Episcopal Church’s Office of Pastoral Development, met with Cook in October. “Details confidential to only the Presiding Bishop’s office,” it says.

Efforts late Monday to reach the offices of Jefferts Schori and Sutton, as well as Cook’s attorney, David Irwin, were unsuccessful.

The Episcopal Church began investigating Cook after she was charged last month with manslaughter, drunken-driving, texting while driving and leaving the scene of the crime in the death of Thomas Palermo, a father who was out for a Saturday bike ride when he was hit by Cook. It’s not clear whether Jefferts Schori’s office is investigating.

Officials in the diocese have asked Cook to step down from her position as No. 2 in the region.

Officials in the dioceses of Maryland and Easton have said little since Cook’s arrest about what they said and did after the incident in 2010 — when she was pulled over in the middle of the night, driving on three tires and too drunk to complete a sobriety test. Sutton’s office has said that the diocese of Easton recommended her “without hesi­ta­tion or reservation.”

According to the Baltimore Sun, which obtained a transcript of Cook’s 2010 hearing before a judge in that case, she was at the time undergoing three different forms of counseling for drinking and had “voluntarily had an ignition interlock device installed in her car,” the piece said.

“I am regarding this as a major wake-up call in my life, and I’m doing things now that I was not able to do without this motivation,” Cook told District Judge John E. Nunn III, the Sun reported Jan. 31.