Woman Free In Fatal Crash At Peace Arch -- Diet-Pill Defense Works

A judge today ruled that Julia Campagna of Seattle can go home free of any obligation for causing a fiery crash at the Peace Arch border crossing last year that killed two Canadian women.

Justice Thimersingh Singh declined to send Campagna, 28, to a mental hospital or require her to serve probation, instead finding she was temporarily psychotic at the time of the crash and is now no danger to society. The ruling closes the case.

The British Columbia Supreme Court justice found Campagna not criminally responsible by reason of mental illness for the May 30, 1998, crash.

Doctors testified that Campagna had experienced psychotic delusions brought on by the over-the-counter diet drug Xenedrine. She said she bought the drug nine days before the accident in an effort to lose weight and improve her endurance for running marathons.

She took the drug for five days. It made her feel "jittery and up," she told the court. She stopped taking it four days before the crash on the advice of her doctor, but her reaction worsened.

During a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation, she told doctors she was convinced she would begin a romance with Dallas Stars hockey center Joe Nieuwendyk in Vancouver. She said she heard Nieuwendyk's voice over her car radio telling her to speed through the border crossing to Canada, where she would conceive a baby by him. After the crash, she signed in at a hospital-emergency room as Julia Nieuwendyk.

Campagna's car, investigators said, was speeding toward the border at nearly 100 mph when it smashed into the back of another car, which exploded into flames. Kimberly Brooks, 18, of Port Coquitlan and Monique Ishikawa, 19, of North Vancouver were killed.