Phone records, texts may be issues in crash probe
The Olympian's cell phone records will likely be sought in the investigation of a crash in which a woman died.
LOS ANGELES >> Investigators will likely seek Bruce Jenner’s cellphone records to determine if the Olympic gold medalist was texting when he was behind the wheel of an SUV involved in a highway crash in Malibu that killed a woman, authorities said Sunday.
The agency will likely collect phone records for all the drivers involved in Saturday’s multi-vehicle accident, so investigators can check call and text data, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Philip Brooks said.
Investigators could also request search warrants, if necessary. The information gleaned from those records could help inform prosecutors, if they were to consider charges against the drivers involved.
However, Brooks said it is difficult to determine if a driver was texting at the exact time of a collision. Investigators will look at signs of driver behavior such as multiple texts that span a period of time leading up to, or including, the crash, Brooks said.
“The problem is pinpointing the time of the accident,” Brooks said. “If the accident occurred at 12:05 and 30 seconds, or 12:05 and 40 seconds, if you hung up before that, that’s useless information.”
The sheriff’s department has custody of all the vehicles and will be inspecting them to ensure they’re mechanically sound or whether a defect prevented somebody from stopping in time.
Investigators are trying to determine who or what triggered the crash on the Pacific Coast Highway. One woman died, and seven others were injured.
The celebrity gossip website TMZ first reported that the department could issue a search warrant to determine if Jenner was texting at the time of the accident.
Jenner was traveling north when his black Cadillac Escalade rear-ended a Lexus sedan that had just struck the back of a black Toyota Prius, Brooks said. The Lexus veered into oncoming traffic and collided head-on with a black Hummer.
The driver of the Lexus — Kim Howe 69, of Calabasas, California — was pronounced dead at the scene.
The moment of impact was captured by celebrity photographers, who quickly posted the images on the Internet. The photos show the white Lexus mangled in the front and back, facing the Hummer, which had a heavily damaged engine and its hood popped open. Jenner’s Escalade, which was pulling an off-road vehicle, had a damaged front end.