TRENTON — The on-duty state trooper accused of driving drunk and crashing into another car at a rest stop last month allegedly had a blood alcohol content that was twice the legal limit, documents show.
Sgt. First Class Michael Roadside, 51, emerged from his troop car looking “disheveled” and attempted to pay the driver whose car he struck $1,000 if she agreed not to report the incident, according to the woman’s account in police records obtained by NJ Advance Media Tuesday under an Open Public Records Act request.
Roadside also claimed to troopers that his slurred speech and impaired walking were the result of a recent surgery, the reports show. He was later found to have a blood alcohol content of 0.16 percent, according to the police records.
Roadside remains suspended without pay after the Oct. 26 crash, which resulted in minor damage to the car and no injuries. He was charged with driving while intoxicated, careless driving, and having an open alcohol container in a vehicle.
His attorney, Robert Ebberup, said Tuesday Roadside was “a dedicated trooper for about 29 years of loyal service without any problems.”
Ebberup said his client had not yet entered a plea in court and declined to comment on the allegations.
‘HE WAS SCARING ME’
Roadside had been working a construction detail before he rear-ended a white Audi in his marked cruiser in the Monmouth service area on the Garden State Parkway in Wall Township around 2 p.m. that day, police said.
A state trooper wrote in a report released Tuesday that he “immediately noticed a very strong smell of an alcoholic beverage” when he approached Roadside’s vehicle.
The trooper, Sgt. Matthew J. Durak, also wrote that Roadside was “only partly dressed in uniform,” his speech was slurred, and his shirt “was unbuttoned and appeared to have vomit on it.”
Roadside told the trooper that the woman driving the Audi “stopped short and I hit her.”
But the driver, Kimberly Wilson, of Lincroft, said in a written statement that she had been stopped at a stop sign when Roadside rear-ended her. A diagram of the accident scene released Tuesday backed up her account.
Wilson claimed that when she asked Roadside whether she should call 911, he “said he would take care of it,” offering to “give you a check right now for $1,000.”
The woman declined the offer.
“I asked him if he was a police officer because he was a mess,” she wrote. “His shirt was inside-out, his hair was disheveled, his belly and back were exposed.”
Wilson wrote that she asked Roadside where his uniform and weapon were, at which point he opened his shirt, and a Bud Light cap and a loaded magazine fell to the ground.
“I yelled at him to get in his car right away because he was scaring me,” Wilson wrote. She later called 911.
