Investigators Find Cause of Tiger Woods Crash, Won’t Reveal Citing 'Privacy'
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office said its investigators have determined what caused Tiger Woods to crash his SUV last month but said Wednesday they will not release details.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department executed a search warrant earlier this month to get data from the “black box” in the SUV that Woods was driving.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said a cause was determined but until the Woods camp gives the OK, it will not be released.
“A cause has been determined, the investigation has concluded,” Villanueva said during a live social media event Wednesday.
Villanueva claims investigators need permission from Woods to release information about the crash. It is unclear why the LA Sheriff's Office is withholding information relating to a search warrant signed off by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge.
USA Today previously reported that to obtain a warrant, probable cause that a crime was involved has to be determined — even if it’s a misdemeanor.
Villanueva was asked last month whether Woods would face charges for reckless driving and whether he was impaired during the crash. Villanueva said his office wouldn’t be filing charges and that Woods showed no signs of impairment.
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Johann Schloegl said the Villanueva spoke “about the information known at that time and said it appeared to be a traffic accident," but that Villanueva ultimately spoke too soon.
"The traffic collision investigation is going and traffic investigators have not made any conclusions as to the cause of the collision,” Schloegl said at the beginning of this month.
Schloegl said he believed information stored on the black box — such as the speed the car was traveling at the time of the crash — would assist in determining how and why the collision occurred.
“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 cellphone or something like that,” Schloegl said. “We determine if there was a crime. If there was no crime, we close out the case, and it was a regular traffic collision.”
Greg Risling, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County district attorney, said in an email to The Associated Press on Wednesday that no complaints against Woods had been filed through their office regarding the crash.