OPINION | This article contains commentary that reflects the author's opinion.
Sheriff Alex Villanueva announced that deputies “did not see any evidence of impairment,” according to Fox News.
Villanueva announced that the crash was “purely an accident.
However, forensic experts said that evidence indicates that Woods was inattentive or asleep when the SUV went right into a median instead of staying in the lane.
Apparently, there was a lack of skid marks which indicate braking.
“LASD is not releasing any further information at this time,” the sheriff’s department said in a statement. “The traffic collision investigation is ongoing and traffic investigators continue to work to determine the cause of the collision.”
“I would have thought that you would have him evaluated by a DRE to see whether or not there are some physical clues beyond the operation that would point to impairment,” said Charles Schack.
“To an untrained person, sometimes the effects are a bit more subtle, and require a bit more in-depth examination to bring out the evidence of impairment,” he said.
If Woods was further evaluated following the accident, a blood test could have shown whether or not there were any medications or other drugs in his system
Villanueva said the deputy at the scene concluded that “there was no evidence of any impairment whatsoever.”
“He was lucid, no odor of alcohol, no evidence of any medication, narcotics or anything like that would bring that into question. So that was not a concern at the time. So therefore, obviously no field sobriety test and no DRE,” the sheriff added.
Former detective Jonathan Cherney suggested that it was “like a classic case of falling asleep behind the wheel” because “the road curves and his vehicle goes straight.”
“Impaired people have a tendency of crashing, so if you have a situation like this one, where you have a single-vehicle crash, with out-of-the-ordinary type circumstances, that should trigger the first responder to inquire further and to explore impairment as a possible cause of the collision,” Cherney said.
“I do know significant head injuries can cause people to not know what happened or forget what happened,” Cherney said. “The fact that he doesn’t remember driving at all is also indicative and consistent with the objective symptom of impaired driving.”
It is now too late to get access to Woods’ blood and medical reports without his cooperation or a search warrant.
From Fox News:
To get a warrant, police would need to convince a judge it is necessary and show probable cause that a crime had been committed — which would be “difficult,” Chris Taylor, managing attorney at Taylor & Taylor, a DUI defense specialist in Southern California, told USA Today Sport.The Sheriff’s Department eventually executed a search warrant to obtain the “black box” data from the SUV that could show how fast Woods was traveling, plus any braking or steering activity prior to impact.
The department has not released any of the findings.
During emergency surgery at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Woods had a rod inserted into his tibia and pins and screws in his foot and ankle. Three days later, he was transferred to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and underwent follow-up procedures.
