Kerry Kennedy says she believes her recent auto accident on a New York interstate was caused not by drugs but by a seizure stemming from an old brain injury.
“I apologize to the other drivers who were on the road that day,” Kennedy said outside the courthouse.
Kennedy pleaded not guilty Tuesday night to driving while drug impaired. She was released, but she has to submit to fingerprinting and drug evaluation.
Kennedy said she remembers getting on the highway to go to the gym “and then I have no memory until I was stopped at a traffic light and a police officer was at my car door.”
She said she felt “confused and erratic” and told the officer she might have accidentally taken an Ambien sleeping pill instead of her daily thyroid pill. But drug tests later that day showed “no alcohol, recreational drugs or prescription medication in my system,” she said.
In the crash, the 52-year-old ex-wife of Gov. Andrew Cuomo was swaying, had impaired speech and motor skills and failed a trio of sobriety tests given by cops just minutes after she fled the accident scene and careened off Interstate 684 on three wheels, according to the paperwork.
Kennedy was found slumped over the wheel of her car, with the keys in the ignition and the motor running, around 8:09 am last Friday, just off I-684’s Exit 3, on Route 22 and Hunter Road in Armonk, police documents obtained by The Post reveal.
Minutes earlier, Kennedy had terrorized fellow drivers during a 3 mile drive down the highway, cutting off several cars and appearing to “nod off” and snap back to attention, according to Rocco Scuiletti, the truck driver whose 6,000-pound rig Kennedy hit with her 2008 Lexus.
Scuiletti told The Post he sounded his horn and hit the brakes, but the “completely out of it” Kennedy swerved right into him, ripping the passenger side of her car and shredding her tire on the truck’s lug nuts. Kennedy’s tire flew off, and she “floored it,” driving on the rim for nearly half a mile before abruptly exiting the highway, he said.
When cops, alerted by a witness, approached Kennedy, she “stated she had a thyroid medication and a sleeping medication (believed to be Ambien) and it is possible she took the sleeping pill instead of the thyroid pill,’’ according to a supporting deposition signed by North Castle police officer Joel Thomas.
Kennedy said she was driving to New York City from Armonk, the deposition states.
She failed the horizontal eye movement test, the walk-and-turn test and the one-leg stand – all routine tests administered by police in suspected impaired driving incidents.
Kennedy was able to recite the alphabet, according to the document.
With Post Wire Services