By Vanessa Brown
http://www.2news.tv/news/local/27212824.html

GARDEN CITY – When Rose Harn was hit by a drunk driver 22 years ago and paralyzed, her husband Michael never gave up.

Rose has brain damage, but Michael swears she knows what’s going on around her. He says what makes her situation even more heartbreaking is seeing the way people treat her.

On Tuesday night, they went to the Western Idaho Fair in Garden City. Michael was volunteering at the ‘Mothers Against Drunk Driving’ booth with Rose nearby. That’s when he says an employee of Spectra Productions, the company that produces the fair, told them to leave.

“I said ‘you’re joking and she says no I’m serious. My boss wants you to leave the fairgrounds and I said tell your boss to come down here and tell me that,” Michael said.

He said they barely gave an explanation.

“They didn’t have any, they said it’s too graphic. They said my wife is too graphic because she’s paralyzed,” Harn said.

Ada County, which owns the fairgrounds, says the fair was approached by MADD to ask Harn to leave just the organization’s booth.

In an email from Ada County, Miren Aburusa, the local MADD director, wrote the fair’s director:

“First, I apologize for the problems and inconvenience our booth has caused you. Second, we removed Mr. Harn from tonight’s schedule as a volunteer and we have vocalized this to him. So should he come to the fair it will not be as a volunteer for MADD.”

A county spokesperson, Rich Wright, says MADD received several complaints regarding Harn’s wife.

Top fair officials were unable to speak Wednesday evening because of a fair emergency. They say the fair had a main power line that went down on the grounds leaving food vendors, the concert main stage, and ticket gates without power and unable to conduct fair business.

People working at surrounding booths said Harn’s presence at the fair was tough to watch. They said families should not have to see people who look like Rose.

“I lost my best friend last year in a car accident and I saw her in that vegetative state a week before she died and it was really offending I actually had to end up leaving work early because I couldn’t handle it,” said Alicia Neuschwanger, who was working near MADD’s booth.

Local MADD officials have declined to comment about the situation until they’ve been able to have a conference call with the MADD national headquarters.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho said it was looking into the incident.

“To our detriment, people with disabilities are still far too often treated as second-class citizens, shunned and segregated by physical barriers and social stereotypes, and this is unconstitutional,” the organization said in a statement.