The New Jersey cop who killed one of his friends and a fellow officer in a drunken Staten Island crash has a pitiful history of drunk driving incidents. Officer Pedro Abad, 27, is clinging to life in a Staten Island hospital following the March 20th crash, which occurred after Abad drunkenly plowed into a tractor-trailer truck while driving the wrong way on the West Shore Expressway.
Abad's passenger and fellow officer Patrik Kudlac, 23, was also critically injured in the crash. Another officer, 28-year-old Frank Viggiano, died at Richmond University Medical Center, and civilian Joseph Rodriguez, 28, was pronounced dead at the scene. Abad was off-duty at the time.
NYPD investigators have obtained a warrant to test a sample of Abad's blood taken after the crash, but it's clear from Abad's Instagram account that the men had been drinking prior to the 5 a.m. collision. And now NJ.com reports that Abad has been charged with drunk driving twice in recent years, including a 2013 incident that was captured on dash cam video.
The video shows a blubbering, incoherent Abad unable to complete a sobriety test while imploring an officer ("Webb") he knew from "the Academy" to intervene. "At this point, Officer Webb has nothing to do with my investigation right now, OK?” one officer tells Abad:
The video was captured after Abad crashed his BMW into a parked car in Rahway around 5 a.m. on a Tuesday. In a recording of a 911 call obtained by NJ.com, "the owner of the parked car expresses concern Abad is fleeing the scene before police arrive. The accident report says the car owner told police Abad then 'walked into her home in an apologetic manner' and 'kept apologizing,' but that he smelled like alcohol and 'fell against the wall' of her home several times."
Abad's license was suspended after the 2013 incident, but was reinstated the following year. He was also charged with DWI in 2011, so it seems like every two years the office gets in trouble for drunken driving. Maybe last week's fatal episode will be his last?
