By Mike Rosenstein
nj.com
LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is leaving no stone unturned in its investigation of Tiger Woods’ car crash last week.
USA Today reports investigators “executed a search warrant to obtain data from the ‘black box’ in the car.”
“We’re trying to determine if a crime was committed,” Sheriff’s Deputy John Schloegl told USA TODAY Sports Tuesday. “If somebody is involved in a traffic collision, we’ve got to reconstruct the traffic collision, if there was any reckless driving, if somebody was on their cell phone or something like that. We determine if there was a crime. If there was no crime, we close out the case, and it was a regular traffic collision.”
According to USA Today, a sheriff’s deputy said the warrant is “a routine part of their probe” and called it “due diligence.” However the deputy said “there was ‘no probable cause’ to get a warrant to obtain Woods’ blood from him or the hospital.”
Woods was arrested for DUI in 2007 and later admitted he went through an “intensive” rehab program to fight his addiction to pain killers. But there is no evidence Woods was under the influence during last week’s crash.
The leading theory on the cause of the accident is that Woods “was not paying attention to the road and drifted off of it before crashing his car.” Per USA Today:
They arrived at this theory based on several factors, especially the way Woods’ vehicle appeared to keep going straight ahead instead of staying on the road as it curved right. ... (Woods) broke multiple bones in his lower right leg, which indicates he was applying the brake at the time of impact, according to the experts. They also said the evidence indicates Woods applied the brake late into the collision sequence.
According to USA Today, Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said the were no skid marks on the road to indicate Woods was braking before the crash.
Woods required emergency surgery for multiple leg injuries following the single-car rollover accident.
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