By REX HOGGARD
Senior WriterMore than six months after a crash that involved PGA Tour player Arjun Atwal and resulted in the death of a central Florida businessman, a spokeswoman with the Florida Highway Patrol said Sept. 14 the department will submit a final accident report to the state attorney within the next seven days.
The final report, which FHP officials initially estimated would take about 60 days to complete, was hampered by investigators’ inability to collect data from the “black box” attached to Atwal’s 2006 BMW sedan.
“No company is required by law to come and read the black box,” said FHP spokeswoman Kim Miller. “Initially, (BMW) was cooperative. But since then they have not provided the name of the person we need to subpoena in Germany to come read the box.”
After months of waiting, investigators decided to submit the final report without the black box data using a reconstruction of the crash which occurred March 10 along County Road 535 near Orlando, Fla.
“We have the calculations and reconstructions and for many years we’ve been doing investigations based on this information,” Miller said.
Witnesses said Atwal, who is splitting time this season between the PGA Tour and Nationwide Tour, and John Noah Park, a 48-year-old video-production company executive who lived in Windermere, were involved in an apparent high-speed street race when the two cars lost control rounding a corner on the four-lane road.
Park and Atwal’s cars did not collide, according to an initial FHP report, and a diagram of the crash indicated the 34-year-old player’s car went in the opposite direction of Park’s, across a grass median and two lanes of oncoming traffic before skidding to a stop on the northbound shoulder of the road. The report also estimates Atwal’s speed before the crash at 80 mph.
“We have several witnesses that said it appeared (Atwal and Park) were engaged in a competition,” Miller said in March.
Miller would not say what the final report would recommend. The state attorney can either follow the recommendation of the FHP report or proceed in a different direction. Charges could range from a misdemeanor charge of racing, which in Florida is a second-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail, or vehicular homicide, which carries a maximum penalty of up to 15 years in jail.
The final report will only become public if the state attorney proceeds with charges, a decision which could take from two to four weeks, Miller said.
• • •
Rex Hoggard is a
Golfweek senior writer. To reach him e-mail
rhoggard@golfweek.com.
Posted: 9/14/2007
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