Back when the whole head-exploding Tiger Woods’ scandal began—before the affairs came to light, before the sex addiction, before this magazine cover was hilarious—there was just that bizarre car accident, and a nation wondering how, exactly a superstar athlete could be that terrible of a driver. The day of the accident, we confronted the obvious:
Tiger Woods Book Excerpt: Did Authorities Ignore A DUI?
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↵How could it possibly have happened with him sober and coherent? It is pretty damn difficult to hit a fire hydrant and THEN hit a tree on a different person’s property.
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↵But as more and more scandals began to leak, the actual accident became a footnote to a much bigger story. Looking back, the analysis of the car accident seems almost quaint. We were clearly asking the wrong questions. “Was he driving impaired that night?” just doesn’t have the same appeal of “Did he sleep with 100 women in two years? Statistically speaking, what are the chances he slept with my wife? Or my sister? Or my daughter?”
↵But in any case, the avalanche all started that night, and an excerpt from a forthcoming book on Tiger Woods takes us back to the scene of Tiger’s accident:
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↵To the paramedics and cops on the scene, there was little question that Woods—who was asleep and snoring in the street—was impaired. “I would bet everything I own that he was not fit to drive,” says one of the officers who investigated the case.
↵Minutes later, [Tiger's wife, Elin] emerged from the home with two brown pill bottles of prescription medication. One of them contained the sedative Ambien. The second bottle contained Vicodin, a physically and psychologically addictive narcotic analgesic used for pain management.
↵Paramedics quickly assessed Tiger’s vital signs. His blood pressure was steady; his pulse was strong. Although he was bleeding from the mouth, there was no additional sign of trauma to his head. They exchanged worried glances with the police officers. There were very few external injuries, yet Tiger had been unconscious for nearly 10 minutes. He was either impaired or he had suffered a brain injury.
↵Police say they believed that they had enough evidence to subpoena Woods’ blood from the hospital, a routine process that occurs hundreds of times per day in Florida. They felt they could make a strong case for probable cause, and were sure that the State Attorney’s Office would agree. But officers were stunned to learn that the State Attorney was unwilling to subpoena the blood-test results. Although a spokeswoman for the office says that Woods’ celebrity status played no part in the decision, officers say that Woods’ fame—along with his high-powered legal team—protected him from being charged with a DUI.
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↵It’s certainly an ugly incident all-around, and nothing that anyone wants to dreg up months after the accident. But aside from any worn-out moralizing in Tiger’s direction, this is stuff is just fascinating.
↵Just this snapshot of the scene offers a case study in the strengths and weakness of both Tiger Woods and the United States Justice system, with hints of backroom dealing, prescription drug dependency, state-sponsored coverups... Can you imagine the entire book? Yeah, I’d read that.
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