Woman learns from her trials

She was in a coma after being given a drink with "date rape'' drugs. Now she wants to help others avoid them.

By JOUNICE L. NEALY

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 5, 2000

Jennifer J. Kruse was searching for a way to cap off a Saturday night when she and her best friend went out two years ago. They wanted to dance and laugh and have a good time.

The first bar was dead, but they met a stranger.

Brett Misener gave them a good tip about a happening club in Clearwater. Give him a ride and he'd pay their way in, the 25-year-old man proposed.

His tip checked out. Liquid Blue was packed.

Kruse, 29, worked up a sweat on the dance floor. Conveniently, Misener had a drink in his hand. Kruse wouldn't even have to leave the dance floor to quench her thirst. Thinking it was harmless, she took a sip and contorted her face.

Before she could ask what it was, Kruse was unconscious on the floor.

She awoke from a coma in the hospital two days later.

Kruse was lucky. A car accident three years earlier left her in a coma for 10 days. She and a friend accepted a ride from a stranger in 1995 and the car crashed into a building, nearly killing her. Kruse, who has six metal plates in her head, never knew what happened to the driver of that car.

But she does know what will happen to the man who gave her a near-fatal drink in the nightclub.

Misener is scheduled to be sentenced today for giving Kruse a drink that contained GBL and GHB, also known as "date rape" drugs. He was convicted in March of culpable negligence in what prosecutors say is probably the first criminal case of its kind in Pinellas County.

Defense attorneys argued that Misener made a mistake. "He thought it was safe," said Willie Pura, a public defender. Misener faces a maximum prison term of about seven years for culpable negligence and other drug-related charges.

For the second time in her life, Kruse almost died.

"That's why I pushed for a trial," she said.

'This has never been safe'

Kruse, who now works as a counselor at Operation PAR, wants other young women to know about the dangers of secret drugs.

A 15-year-old Michigan girl died last year after consuming a GHB-spiked drink. Four men were convicted in the case. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has banned GHB, or gamma hydroxybutric acid, which has been billed as a dietary product that can help with weight loss, body building and insomnia.

The drug has dangerous side effects, including comas and seizures.

Health officials are warning against products that say they only contain gamma butyrolactone, or GBL, or 1,4 butanediol (BD). They can be converted into GHB.

Both GHB and GBL were found in a health-food drink called Renewtrient that Misener gave to Kruse at the club.

"Health-food stores should have acted more responsibly ... when you go to a store and you buy something, you assume that the product is a safe product," said Pinellas prosecutor Bill Burgess. "This has never been safe."

Changing her lifestyle

Kruse grew up mostly in Marietta, Ga., and moved to downtown Atlanta after her high school graduation. She was a waitress and did some modeling.

She wanted to lead a glamorous life, surrounded by athletes and beautiful people. Kruse drank and did drugs, mostly cocaine on the weekends.

"I was just going through a stage. I got caught up in the nightclub lifestyle," Kruse said during an interview in April. A nightclub led to the first incident when Kruse nearly lost her life. She and a friend had been drinking and met a man who gave them a ride on March 12, 1995.

"He seemed okay to me," said Kruse, who had beer and cocaine in her blood at the time. "He hit a building."

Kruse fractured her skull in six places and was hospitalized for three months. Her right arm came out of its socket. Her brain and muscles couldn't coordinate her breathing, walking, talking or swallowing.

"Well, they said that I'd die," Kruse said of the doctors' prognosis at the time. Kruse says she knew, "Man, that's just wrong. It didn't even occur to me that what they're saying could be right."

Kruse moved to Safety Harbor with her mother while being rehabilitated.

"She's always had a lot of spirit from the time she was little," said Kruse's mom, Pat Taylor. "She's fairly independent. After the accident, she got serious about life."

Kruse enrolled in St. Petersburg Junior College in 1997 and tested into the honors program. "And she kept up with all the work throughout," said professor Ben Wiley. She now is a student at the University of South Florida majoring in psychology. Kruse intends to pursue a master's degree and help people who have suffered injuries like those she sustained in the car accident.

And she hopes to visit schools in the future to tell girls about her experience with date-rape drugs.

"I've always known she had it in her," said Taylor, 60. Kruse attributes part of that to her outlook on life.

"I'm not a victim," she said.

-- Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

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