Add Category
Updated
Footage of Tiger Woods' DUI arrest has emerged, with the video showing him struggling to understand and follow police orders during a roadside sobriety test.
Police who arrested Woods found the golfer asleep at the wheel on the side of a six-lane Florida road in the dark of early morning, the engine running and his right blinker flashing.
His speech was slow and slurred, and he didn't know how far away he was from home.
Florida police have released the dashcam video from their encounter with the champion golfer.
Woods struggles to walk in a straight line, stumbles as he is asked to stand and touch his nose, and also appears confused by requests to repeat the alphabet.
"You are going to recite the entire English alphabet in a slow, non-rhythmic manner, meaning you're not going to sing it, OK? Do you understand the instructions?" the policeman says.
Woods replies: "I do."
"What were the instructions?" the officer asks.
Woods answers: "Not to sing the national anthem backwards."
He then recites the alphabet but the policeman is unconvinced.
"I'm placing you under arrest for suspicion of driving under the influence," the officer says.
At one point during the incident, Woods appears to be on the verge of falling over and one officer rushes to catch him.
A police report said Woods was "extremely sleepy", and the officer observed it was hard for Woods to keep his eyes open and to walk.
In the incident report filed by the four officers at the scene, Woods kept dozing off even after his initial contact with police.
The report also said Woods changed his story on where he was coming from and where he was going.
His car was parked in a direction headed the opposite way from his home on Jupiter Island.
In addition, police described fresh damage to the driver's side of the car — both tyres were flat, along with minor damage to the rims.
There also was minor damage to the front driver's side bumper and rear bumper, and the passenger rear tail light appeared to be out.
Breath tests showed no alcohol in Woods' system and police said Woods agreed to a urine test.
A police affidavit on the incident listed four medications — including opioid pain medication Vicodin — that Woods reported taking.
The FDA warning for Vicodin says it "may impair the mental and/or physical abilities required for the performance of potentially hazardous tasks such as driving a car or operating machinery; patients should be cautioned accordingly".
Woods told police he was recovering from surgery. Before his four back surgeries, Woods had four surgeries on his left knee dating to his freshman year at Stanford in 1994.
"I didn't realise the mix of medications had affected me so strongly," Woods said in his statement.
Woods has not competed in four months, and he had fusion surgery on his lower back — his fourth back surgery since April 2014 — on April 20 that will keep him off the PGA Tour for at least the rest of the season.
ABC/AP
Topics: crime, police, law-crime-and-justice, golf, sport, united-states
First posted