Sheriff department’s investigation into Tiger Woods crash scrutinized

In the early stages of their investigation into why Tiger Woods crashed his car on Feb. 23, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department officials made critical decisions that were favorable to Woods and effectively gave him the benefit of the doubt, according to forensic experts.

Sheriff Alex Villanueva announced that day that his deputies “did not see any evidence of impairment” with the golf legend after they found him trapped in his rolled-over SUV.

A day later, Villanueva declared the crash was “purely an accident” and said there had been no need to bring in a drug-recognition expert to evaluate Woods for impairment shortly after the car wreck.

There was no “drug recognition expert needed to respond to do any further assessment of that,” Villanueva said Feb. 24. “This is what it is: an accident.”

Law enforcement officers look over a damaged vehicle following an accident involving Tiger Woods. (Photo: Ringo H.W. Chiu, AP)

But the available evidence in the case indicates Woods was inattentive or asleep when his vehicle went straight into a median instead of staying with his lane as it curved right, multiple forensic experts told USA TODAY Sports. Woods also told deputies twice that he didn’t remember how the crash occurred and didn’t even remember driving after surviving the crash with broken bones in his right leg.

Such clues, including the lack of braking evidence on the road, have led experts to question two particular sheriff-department decisions as the investigation remains ongoing:

► To frame the crash as an “accident” right away. Hours after the crash, the sheriff and the deputy who responded to the 911 call both emphasized the downhill road as a potential cause.

► To not bring in a drug-recognition expert (DRE), a law enforcement officer who is trained to identify clues of impairment and determine whether the driver should have his blood examined for medications or other drugs. Calling on a DRE can be routine in serious crash investigations, but it is up to each agency in charge.

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“LASD is not releasing any further information at this time,” the sheriff’s department said in a statement Friday. “The traffic collision investigation is ongoing and traffic investigators continue to work to determine the cause of the collision.”

Woods’ agent, Mark Steinberg, didn’t return a message seeking comment.

Accident reconstruction experts said Woods’ inability to remember driving at all was reason enough to bring in a DRE, if only to be thorough in the investigation.

“Exactly, exactly,” said Charles Schack, a former New Hampshire state police trooper who is now president of Crash Experts, which analyzes traffic accidents for law firms and insurance companies. “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. 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.”

DREs don’t automatically call for blood to be examined. They instead make a determination of whether it’s necessary at the end of a 12-step process. That protocol can take place away from the crash scene, and it includes questioning the driver about medications and examining the driver’s eyes and vital signs.

A day after the crash, Villanueva gave the following reason for not bringing a DRE into the Woods case a day earlier:

“The deputy at the scene assessed the condition of Tiger Woods and there was no evidence of any impairment whatsoever,” Villanueva said. “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.”

Forensic accident experts say impairment isn’t always obvious to untrained officers and that the evidence in this case shows it to be more than a simple “accident” resulting from momentary inattention or loss of control. Jonathan Cherney, a former police detective who walked the scene after the crash, said the evidence in the Woods case indicates it was “like a classic case of falling asleep behind the wheel, because the road curves and his vehicle goes straight.”

Woods, 45, was heading north at around 7 a.m. that day when his SUV went straight into the median instead of sticking to the road. The vehicle then knocked down a sign, kept going through the median, then went into opposing traffic lane and off of the road before it hit a tree and rolled over. It traveled about 400 feet in a relatively straight line since hitting the median, without evidence of braking on the road or steering input to significantly deviate from the path Woods took after hitting the median.

If he had been looking at his phone for a moment, experts said they would expect to see evidence that he braked or tried to steer out of the median long before that.

“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,” said Cherney, an accident reconstructionist in Southern California.

At the scene of the crash, Woods was described as alert but could not walk after breaking bones in his lower right leg. He had to be placed on a backboard before going to the hospital. A sheriff deputy’s affidavit also said he sustained “injuries/lacerations” to his face but did not mention head injuries. Woods was wearing his seatbelt when his airbags were deployed, according to the affidavit. Airbags can cause facial injuries but combine with seatbelts to help prevent head trauma.

Cherney said the fact that Woods twice told deputies he couldn’t remember driving at all “absolutely” is a clue of impairment.

“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.”

If a DRE was called in to evaluate Woods at the hospital, a blood examination could have shown whether or not there were any medications or other drugs in his system. If medications or drugs were found in his system, he could have been charged with misdemeanor driving under the influence of drugs.

But because there was no DRE that day and no blood evidence obtained by the sheriff, it is too late to get access to Woods’ blood and medical reports at the hospital without Woods’ cooperation or a search warrant. In order to get a warrant, the sheriff would need to convince a judge it is necessary at this point and show probable cause that a crime was committed.

“It would seem to me to be difficult to establish the necessary foundation to get a search warrant” now, said Chris Taylor, managing attorney at Taylor & Taylor, a DUI defense specialist in Southern California.

Taylor said this is in part because of all the information lacking from the investigation: a DRE exam, objective symptomology or any admissions by the driver. 

Sheriff’s Deputy John Schloegl also told USA TODAY Sports March 2 that the department was not pursuing a warrant for blood evidence because it didn’t have probable cause to get one. “We can’t just assume that somebody’s history makes them guilty,” Schloegl said then.

In 2017, police Woods asleep at the wheel in Florida, where was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving. A toxicology report from then showed he had the sleep medication Ambien in his system, among other medications such as Vicodin. In 2009, Woods was involved in another single-car crash with his SUV and was described as unconscious and snoring at the scene by a witness in a police report. Woods was cited for careless driving, but no medical records were obtained by law enforcement.

Cherney noted “impaired driving can happen 24 hours a day” even though many would not expect to see an impaired driver at the early time Woods crashed. For example, the label for Ambien warns about being impaired a day after taking it, unlike alcohol.

DREs generally know this and are trained to look for signs of it. To get a general sense of how they are utilized, USA TODAY Sports contacted California statewide DRE coordinator Glen Glaser, a sergeant with the California Highway Patrol. He declined to discuss the Woods case specifically and instead addressed DRE protocols generally.

“Any time we had any serious crashes where there were major injuries or fatalities, I tried to do evaluations on all the drivers even if we did not suspect impairment, only because it can help out folks down the line,” Glaser said, noting how it helps establish facts for any future legal disputes. “It’s always nice to have somebody do a thorough investigation.”

What if a driver in a crash tells the responding officer he can’t remember driving at all?

“If you were to tell that to the drug recognition expert, 'Hey, this person doesn’t remember driving or was very incoherent at the scene,’ that would be a clue we’d want to follow up on, because certain drugs have certain effects on the human body,” Glaser said.

Several days after the crash, the sheriff’s department did execute a search warrant to obtain the “black box” data from Woods’ vehicle that could show how fast he was going, plus any braking or steering activity prior to impact.  The sheriff’s department has not disclosed any findings from that, however.

The sheriff’s department since has tempered Villanueva’s early assessment that the crash was an accident, saying he only was making a preliminary observation.

“There’s no such thing as an accident from our standpoint,” said Felix Lee of Collision Reconstruction Consulting, a business that is part of the Expert Institute network of expert witnesses for litigation. “It’s 'What are the contributing factors?’ How can they reach that conclusion already if they don’t know the speed or driver input or anything like that?”

Bringing in a DRE on Feb. 23 also could have ruled out potential contributing factors.

“This is a high-profile crash because of who was involved, even though I would expect he is treated the same as any other person driving the vehicle,” said Schack, the former state trooper. “I would think you would scrutinize things a bit more thoroughly just to ensure, if for no other reason than to rule him out.”

Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. E-mail: [email protected]

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