DWI Injury Accident

July 9, 2009

DWI Arrest in Bridgewater, NJ, a Matter of Attempted Suicide

People drink for all sorts of reasons, many times because they are unhappy with life or feel that they are in a situation from which there is no escape. As a New Jersey drunk driving defense lawyer, I know that many people accused of DWI are not necessarily thinking clearly, and not just because of the physical affects of alcohol. A recent news article brought this home when I read that a woman from Middlesex County had tried to kill herself in Bridgewater Township.

According to police reports, Kathleen Hoffman, a resident of South Plainfield, was sitting in her Chevrolet Corvette at a scenic overlook near Route 78 in the early afternoon last Tuesday. Apparently distraught, the 55-year-old then crashed her sports car though a wood barrier, through a metal fence and down a steep wooded embankment, causing the car to roll several times before coming to rest at the bottom.

By the time rescuers arrived at the scene, she was trapped but still alive. Emergency workers had to cut her out of the vehicle, after which she was airlifted to nearby Morris Memorial Hospital where she was treated for moderate injuries. Thankfully, nobody else was injured in the incident, although it did tie up traffic on Route 78 for quite sometime.

June 29, 2009

New Jersey Man Gets Seven Years in Prison for Fatal DWI Traffic Accident

by Jonathan F. Marshall

A New Jersey court has sentenced a Glassboro, NJ, man to seven years in prison for a 2008 drunk driving accident that caused the death of his friend. Arthur L. Anwar Jr., 53, pled guilty to vehicular homicide last Friday for the fatal DWI traffic accident in Monroe Township last December 21. The Superior Court judge handed down the sentence as recommended by the assistant Gloucester County prosecutor for the second-degree offense of causing a death while driving under the influence of alcohol.

According to earlier reports, the seven-year jail term was offered in exchange for a guilty plea. As a New Jersey drunk driving defense lawyer and former municipal prosecutor myself, I have vast experience with cases just like this one. In this instance, if the defendant had held out for a jury trial, he could have received a maximum of 10 years for the death of his friend, 24-year-old Arthur L. Davis, also from Glassboro. The defense’s case was complicated by alleged evidence of cocaine found on the suspect, though no drug DUI charges were actually levied.

According to police reports, the deadly accident happened in the early morning hours a few days before Christmas. Leaving from a bar in Glassboro, Anwar was driving his 1997 Mazda, with Davis in the front passenger seat, when the car crashed into the back of a dump truck on Glassboro Road in Monroe Township. Davis died in the hospital from multiple injuries not long after the collision. Anwar had admitted to being the driver of the vehicle and when police measured his blood alcohol content (BAC) they foudn it to be an incredible 0.205 — two and one-half times greater than the legal limit in New Jersey.

June 21, 2009

Drunk Driving Suspected in Multi-Car Injury Pileup in Newark

by Jonathan F. Marshall

Speeding and driving under the influence of alcohol were suspected contributing factors in a horrendous multi-vehicle DWI accident a few nights ago in Essex County, New Jersey. An allegedly drunk driver was in one of two cars observed traveling at a high rate of speed just before they both crashed into three other vehicles waiting for a traffic signal at a busy Newark intersection.

Nine people were injured in the five-car crash at the intersection of Frelinghuysen and Haynes Avenues. Except for the driver and passenger in one of the five vehicles, everyone involved escaped serious injury — those two people were reportedly taken to the hospital in critical condition.

Following the early-morning accident, police detained Rayquan Horton, 24, who they suspected was one of the two drivers who may have been responsible for the accident. Horton, a resident of Irvington, New Jersey, was later charged with driving under the influence of alcohol. According to preliminary police reports, all of the people involved in the accident were coming from the same night club in Elizabeth.

June 15, 2009

Bergen County Drunk Driving Crash Sends New Jersey Postal Employee to Hospital

by Jonathan F. Marshall

An allegedly drunk out-of-state driver caused a severe traffic accident in Closter, New Jersey, when he blew past a stop sign in his SUV and struck a sedan driven by a career postal employee, sending that man to the hospital with multiple injuries. The DWI traffic accident occurred today at West Street and Harrington Avenue where Kevin Greutert, 57, ended up being pinned in his vehicle until rescue workers could get him free and transported to Hackensack University Medical Center.

According to police reports, Patrick Martin Doyle, a resident of New York, was moving south on West Street in a white Nissan Pathfinder. As he approached the Harrington Avenue intersection, he apparently didn’t notice the stop sign and slammed into an Oldsmobile sedan being driven eastbound by Greutert, a resident of River Edge, NJ.

Greutert, a 30-year employee with the U.S. Postal Service, suffered a fractured pelvis and a collapsed lung, as well as a number of other minor injuries, according to Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor John Higgins, who also heads the county’s Fatal Accident Unit.

May 2, 2009

DWI Injury Accident Caused by New Jersey Man with Long History of Drunk Driving

by Jonathan F. Marshall

Talk about your repeat drunk driving offenders, East Rutherford resident, Shaun Campbell, will surely have a place in the record books. According to reports, the 39-year-old already had a dozen DWI convictions, and 78 license suspensions, prior to a recent accident when he allegedly caused a head-on crash with another driver and his four-year-old daughter at the intersection of South Street and Spring Valley Road in Morris Township.

Police say that Campbell was allegedly intoxicated when he ran his SUV into another vehicle in Morristown on Thursday, April 23. Immediately following the accident, the suspect was viewed running from the scene into nearby Loantaka Park in an effort to escape from police. All of this happened while Campbell’s license was suspended by the state.

Campbell was caught and initially charged with driving while intoxicated and obstruction of justice. However, authorities also hit him last Wednesday with a charge of fourth-degree assault-by-auto in connection with this most recent accident.