New Knicks guard Jason Kidd was so hammered while driving down a Suffolk County lane that he didn’t know how his car got wrapped around a power pole, police said today.
Kidd smelled of booze and had bloodshot eyes when police responded to the one-car pileup on Cobb Road in Water Mill, LI, shortly after 1:56 a.m. yesterday, police said.
“I was at a club in the South Fork,” Kidd told a cop on the scene, according to the criminal complaint charging him with DWI.
“I had a few drinks. I’m the driver.”
Kidd looked like he had been drinking, according to a police report.
“Defendant found in seat of vehicle and stated he was driver. Upon exiting vehicle defendant smelled heavily of an alcoholic beverage, very unsteady on his feet, bloodshot and watery eyes,” according to a report by Southampton Town police that emerged today.
“Defendant did not know what had happened in accident. Defendant arrested for 1192-3 transported to hospital for injuries. Released and brought to HQW for processing. Defendant refused in hospital to chemical test.”
Kidd was at the scene for roughly 45 minutes – when someone passed by, saw the accident and called cops, police chief William Wilson said.
When officers arrived, the future NBA Hall of Famer was still in the car.
“We had to be careful because there were live wires from the downed pole,” Wilson said.
Kidd exited car under his own power and was “cooperative,” according to Wilson.
The car was not impounded and later returned to Kidd’s possession, via an auto body shop. Kidd’s smashed-up Cadillac Escalade is “very likely not driveable,” cops said.
The 39-year-old Kidd was signed last week and expected to be a mentor to up-and-coming Knicks star Jeremy Lin.
But in recent days, it’s been reported that Lin won’t be resigned by the Knicks after all — so Kidd and Raymond Felton are now expected to split the point-guard work at MSG in 2012-13.
Denotra Coleman, mom of Kidd’s wife Porschla Coleman, defended her son-in-law.
“It was an accident,” she told the Post from her home in Gulfport, Miss. “They’re wonderful”
She added: “My daughter’s fine. Thank God Jason didn’t even get hurt.”
The elder Coleman asked Knicks fans not to judge Kidd on his incident.
“Jason’s a good father,” she said. “He’s a good person, and here you are going to take one accident, one accident and one mistake and make something more about it.”
Jason Kidd. (AP)