LIFE CUT OFF: Shana Dowdeswell passed out and days later died after partying at The Basement, a bar her mom says served the starlet too many drinks. (
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The mother of a Broadway actress who drank herself to death said a downtown bartender should have cut her daughter off before she reached the point of alcohol poisoning.
Shana Dowdeswell, 23 — who has acted onstage alongside Cynthia Nixon and appears in the new Robert De Niro movie “The Big Wedding” — died five days after downing several whiskey shots on Dec. 7 at the West Eighth Street bar The Basement.
Her grieving mom, Laurie Dowdeswell, 60, told a Sixth Precinct Community Council meeting on Wednesday that she confronted staffers about her daughter’s overdose.
“They told me they had served her four shots of whiskey and that she was drinking water,” she told police.
She asked cops to crack down on bars that served people even when they are clearly drunk.
“The same way there’s Mothers Against Drunk Driving, there has to be a Mothers Against Overdrinking. Wake up kids — it has grotesque outcomes,” she warned.
Deputy Inspector Brandon Del Pozo said at the meeting that cops have stepped up inspections of bars and clubs since Dowdeswell’s shocking death.
They are cracking down on overserving and underage drinking — and have written more than 180 summonses this year.
Dowdeswell said Shana — a stage and screen actress since age 8 who has appeared in “Law & Order” — downed the booze at The Basement starting around midnight.
She eventually staggered home and passed out on the stoop of the family’s Minetta Street home at around 2:30 a.m., her mother said.
A dog-walker called 911 and “my husband looked out the window and saw them putting her in the ambulance and woke me up,” Dowdeswell said. “I think I’m still in shock.”
Shana was a regular at The Basement.
“At first, I hated The Basement. That was a well-known gathering place for people who wanted to drink a lot for a little bit of money. There’s just something going wrong down there,” Laurie said.
Basement manager Ronnie Mejia denied that Shana was served too much.
“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,” Mejia said.
The Medical Examiner’s Office ruled that Shana died of “natural causes due to complications of acute and chronic alcoholism.”