NEW YORK (AP) – Former NBA player Jayson Williams struck a tree with his SUV on Tuesday after veering off an exit, suffering minor injuries. Police said he may have been drinking before the crash.
Williams was in the passenger seat when officers arrived and told them someone else had been driving. But witnesses told police they saw him in the driver’s seat, and officers said no one else was in the car.
The black Mercedes-Benz SUV veered off the curved exit at East 20th Street in Manhattan, authorities said. Williams was taken to Bellevue Hospital.
The New York Police Department said it appeared Williams may have been drinking before the crash at 3:15 a.m. at a northbound exit of the FDR Drive. However, he has not been charged.
fense against a reckless manslaughter charge stemming from a 2002 shooting.
Williams retired from the New Jersey Nets in 2000 after a decade in the NBA, unable to overcome a broken leg suffered a year earlier when he collided on court with teammate Stephon Marbury. At the time, he was in the second year of a six-year, $86 million contract.
He was suspended from his job as an NBA analyst for NBC after the shooting.
Williams is scheduled to be retried on the reckless manslaughter count that produced a deadlocked jury in 2004.
Witnesses testified that Williams had been drinking and was showing off a shotgun in his bedroom in February 2002 when he snapped the weapon shut and it fired one shot that struck a hired driver, Costas Christofi, in the chest. They also testified that Williams initially placed the gun in the dead man’s hands and instructed those present to lie about what happened.
The defense maintained the shooting was an accident and that Williams panicked afterward.
The jury deadlocked on the reckless manslaughter count, acquitted Williams of aggravated manslaughter and convicted him of covering up the shooting. He was never sentenced for the cover-up counts, pending the outcome of the retrial, and has remained free on bail.
friend said he was acting suicidal. He was charged with assault in May after allegedly punching a man in the face outside a North Carolina bar, but charges were dropped. In November, Williams’ father, E.J., with whom he owned a construction business, died in South Carolina.
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