Shana Dowdeswell's mother calls for booze crackdown

The mother of late actress Shana Dowdeswell has urged police to crack down on bar owners who serve drunk patrons after her daughter died following an apparent booze binge in December (12).

Broadway actress Dowdeswell, who appears in new Robert De Niro movie The Big Wedding, passed away five days after downing whiskey shots at New York venue The Basement.

Officials at the Medical Examiner's Office ruled the star died of "natural causes due to complications of acute and chronic alcoholism", and now her mother Laurie Dowdeswell has spoken out to call for changes in drinking practices.

She told a Sixth Precinct Community Council meeting in the Big Apple on Wednesday (24Apr13) that she confronted employees at The Basement bar about the night her daughter was at the venue, claiming, "They told me they had served her four shots of whiskey and that she was drinking water."

She is quoted by the New York Post as adding, "The same way there's Mothers Against Drunk Driving, there has to be a Mothers Against Overdrinking. Wake up kids - it has grotesque outcomes."

The Basement manager Ronnie Mejia denied Dowdeswell was served too much alcohol, stating, "I never saw her drunk. Wasted? No. The time she was here, she had two or three drinks and a glass of water. As far as I know, she never got more than three drinks."