Tiger Woods won’t face reckless driving charges, say police
Golfer was rescued on Tuesday after becoming trapped inside a mangled vehicle
Tiger Woods is not looking at criminal charges after escaping his car crash on Tuesday, which left him trapped inside his mangle vehicle before a rescue mission.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva told reporters that Woods would not be charged with a misdemeanor, such as reckless driving, clarifying that what occurred was instead an infraction.
“A reckless driving charge has a lot of elements to it. This is purely an accident. There will be a cause of it , and there’ll be a vehicle code attached to the cause… but that’s an infraction, and reckless driving is actually more than an infraction, that’s a misdemeanor crime. And there’s nothing like that [here],” said Villanueva.
“We don’t contemplate any charges whatsoever,” he added. “This remains an accident — an accident is not a crime. They do happen, unfortunately.”
Woods crashed his car on the Palos Verdes peninsula in Los Angeles, reportedly known for a tricky downhill slope. It was a single-vehicle collision.
Doctors have since operated on the golfer, who is in stable condition.
“Mr Woods suffered significant orthopaedic injuries to his lower right extremity that were treated during emergency surgery by Orthopaedic trauma specialists at Harbor-UCLA Medical Centre, a level 1 trauma centre," Anish Mahajan, MD, Chief Medical Officer and Interm CEO of Harbor-UCLA Medical Centre, earlier stated.
"Comminuted open fractures affecting both the upper and lower portions of the tibia and fibula bones were stabalised by inserting a rod into the tibia.
"Additional injuries to the bones of the foot and ankle were stabalised with a combination of screws and pins. Trauma to the muscle and soft-tissue of the leg required surgical release of the covering of the muscles to relieve the pressure due to swelling,” added Mahajan.