CSI: CRIME scene investigation

Season 3 - Episode 17 - Crash & Burn

Written by Josh Berman
Directed by Richard Lewis

An elderly woman drives her car into the window of a popular local restaurant at happy hour, killing three people, and injuring many – including Hank, Sara’s paramedic boyfriend. But as Sara investigates what caused the driver to accelerate as she approached the plate glass window, she discovers something of a personal nature that she doesn’t want to know – that Hank was there to meet another woman.

As Catherine and Warrick analyze the scene, an autopsy reveals that there was no age-related cause to the terrible accident, which is troubling because they cannot find any forensic explanation either. When Greg performs a tox screen on their elderly victim, the team can finally gets a lead – the woman, inexplicably, was stoned. Dr. Robbins agrees to go back to the drawing board, and the tox screen tips him off – she was apparently smoking grass to relieve the effects of glaucoma, but not so advanced that it would have affected her driving. What they seem to have is a kamikaze Grandma, and no solid explanation for what happened.

Did the gas pedal stick? Why was she doing more than twice the legal speed limit? Did her brakes fail? The CSIs consult traffic cameras, examine her state-of-the-art GPS, and Sara combs the vehicle, which comes up clean. Slowly, the team begins to realize that it may not have been an accident at all, and perhaps Diane Lambert had motive. If the restaurant was a target, perhaps their kamikaze Grandma had a grudge against someone sitting inside, who made her so angry that her only option was to sacrifice herself and use her Jaguar as a murder weapon.

Meanwhile, Grissom and Nick are called to the scene when a woman is asphyxiated in her bedroom. But why did she die, and her husband, who was asleep next to her, survive? When Nick examines the chimney in the couple’s room, he discovers a broken damper. He also turns up additional evidence – activated charcoal – in the natural gas fireplace. A foreign fuel source in a compromised chimney means one thing – this was no accident. Add one creepy son, who resents his parents and thinks he’s smarter than Grissom, and the CSIs have a suspect, and Grissom, a challenge.