N.J. Governor Is
Critical After Car Crash
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
and DAVID W. CHEN, NYTimes on the Web, April 13, 2007
CAMDEN, N.J. -- Gov. Jon S.
Corzine remained on a ventilator and was heavily sedated for pain today as he
recovered in the hospital following a car accident Thursday in which it appears
he was not wearing a seat belt, his spokesman and a doctor said.
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Photo: Tim Shaffer/Reuters
Two of
Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s children, Jeffrey and Jennifer Corzine, during
a news conference today at the Cooper University Hospital in Camden,
N.J. |
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Mr. Corzine was in the front
passenger seat when his state police vehicle swerved to avoid an apparently
out-of-control driver on the Garden State Parkway, and hit a guardrail. He
was flown by helicopter to Cooper University Hospital in Camden, where he
received seven units of blood and a metal rod in his leg during a two-hour
operation that ended about 11:30 p.m.
Mr. Corzine broke his left leg, sternum, collarbone, six ribs on each side and a
lower vertebra, and remained in critical but stable condition today after
undergoing surgery, said his spokesman, Anthony Coley. His doctors also
said the governor remained heavily sedated because the pain from chest injuries
made it difficult to breathe.
Authorities continued to search for the pickup truck driver blamed for causing
the crash.
As required by the state Constitution, the governor’s powers were assumed by the
president of the State Senate, Richard J. Codey, who will remain in charge as
long as Mr. Corzine is hospitalized.
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Sylwia Kapuscinski for The New York Times
Richard J.
Codey, who stepped in as acting governor, during a press conference
today. At left is Tom Shea, Gov. Corzine's chief of staff. |
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"Business will continue as usual,"
Mr. Codey said at the Statehouse in Trenton this afternoon. "There will be
no change in the way businesses are delivered in our state."
At a news conference today outside the hospital, reporters asked doctors and the
governor’s spokesman whether Mr. Corzine was wearing his seat belt during the
accident, as required by state law.
“The state police is conducting that investigation,” Mr. Coley said. “It
does not appear that the governor was wearing his seat belt.”
On Thursday, Col. Joseph R. Fuentes, superintendent of the New Jersey State
Police, said Mr. Corzine often does not wear his seat belt. Today, Dr.
Steven Ross, the head of trauma at Cooper University Hospital, said that Mr.
Corzine had significantly improved over night and was awake and able to give yes
or no responses to questions, despite having a tube in his throat.
Dr. Ross said that hospital staff hoped Mr. Corzine could be taken off the
ventilator in the next few days, but how quickly that could happen would depend
on his recovery, which was impossible to predict at this point.
“He has had severe trauma,” the doctors said.
Mr. Corzine suffered a broken leg and sternum, 12 broken ribs and a broken
vertebra, Dr. Ross said.
“There’s no way to tell specifically how close he came to more severe injuries,
but based on pictures I’ve seen of the crash, I think he’s lucky," he said.
Two of Mr. Corzine’s three children, Jeffrey and Jennifer Corzine, said in a
brief statement that they had visited their father this morning in the hospital.
Jennifer said she and her brother had a “really good vibe” from their father.
“He’s a fighter.”
The governor’s accident comes at a time when New Jersey faces a $2 billion
budget deficit that Mr. Corzine had to close by July 1. Several leading
politicians said they were glad the governor’s offices were in the hands of Mr.
Codey, a Democrat like Mr. Corzine, who recently served as acting governor.
Mr. Codey stepped into the role for about 14 months after James E. McGreevey
resigned in 2004 in the midst of an extramarital affair with a man.
Mr. Corzine is scheduled for two more operations, Saturday and Monday, to clean
up the wounds, Dr. Ostrum said, adding that it would be “days to weeks” until he
was lucid enough to conduct state business, and three to six months before he
could get around fairly well. Though the governor sustained a cut on his
forehead, Dr. Ostrum said a CAT scan showed no brain injury.
The state trooper who was driving the Chevrolet Tahoe that was carrying Mr.
Corzine was flown separately to Cooper, and asked that no information about his
condition be released. Samantha Gordon, an assistant to the governor who
often travels with him, was also hurt in the accident but walked into the Camden
hospital unassisted shortly before 8 p.m.
Senate Minority Leader Leonard Lance said he would be praying “for the governor
to have a quick recovery, and I thank God that he was not more seriously
injured.”
He also said he was confident that the state’s business would flow seamlessly
with Mr. Codey in charge.
"He will be a steady hand on the tiller,” he said. “No one could possibly
become Senate president today without having an intimate knowledge of New
Jersey.”
He said he did not think the governor’s accident to affect the state’s budget
process which has several statutory deadlines between now and June 30 with the
fiscal year ends.
State Senator Josephy Kyrillos, Republican from Monmouth County and a former New
Jersey Republican Party chairman, also said he was confident about Mr. Codey’s
ability to see the state smoothly through this accident.
"It is a big and deep executive branch with smart players to carry on the
functions of government and the public policy," he said.
"As for Dick Codey, it is early but I am assuming that his role will be brief
one,” he said. “If it isn’t — that is different conversation. He is
a steady man and knows his place in this situation and he will not enact
sweeping policy or try to remake the office. He is there to hold things
steady until the governor returns."
Both men said that they did not think that the accident and the governor’s
period of recuperation would seriously affect his administration’s pursuit and
study of such policy issues as the possible sale of the state lottery or sale
and leasing of the New Jersey Turnpike as ways of providing cash to retire some
of the state’s debt.
On Thursday night, Mr. Corzine had delivered a speech to the New Jersey
Conference of Mayors at the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City and was on
his way to Drumthwacket, the governor’s mansion in Princeton, for a meeting
between the Rutgers women’s basketball team and Don Imus, the talk-show host who
was fired on Thursday for making a racist and sexist remark about the players.
Colonel Fuentes of the state police said that a red pickup truck entered the
highway “erratically from the shoulder,” causing a white Dodge Ram pickup truck
to swerve left. The governor’s driver, State Trooper Robert Rasinski,
swerved to avoid the white truck, but hit it, and then slid into the guardrail,
with the impact on the passenger side.
Colonel Fuentes said neither weather nor speed appeared to be a factor. He
said Trooper Rasinski did “an excellent job handling the situation, considering
that a car swerved into his path.”
The driver of the white truck stopped, he said, but the red truck did not,
adding that state police will be examining cameras on the highway in hopes of
identifying the red truck.
Lt. Gerald Lewis Jr. offered new details on the description of the vehicle,
which has still not been found, saying it was an 1980s or early 1990s Ford F150
pickup truck with faded red paint, and a white or red top covering the cargo
portion. It may be registered in New Jersey, he said.
Governor Corzine was traveling, as he normally does, in a two-car caravan.
Officials said the two troopers in the car following Mr. Corzine stopped to care
for him rather than chase the red truck.
James Freund, a volunteer emergency medical technician, said he happened upon
the scene and saw Governor Corzine, his glasses off, pulled from the car head
first on an board used to immobilize the spine. “The only thing you could
verbally hear from him was that he was moaning,” Mr. Freund said. “It
looked like the car made a direct impact on the left guard rail and kind of
hopped over it.”
Mr. Freund said that he saw the injured trooper give the thumbs-up sign to a
fellow trooper, and that a swarm of firefighters and some 30 law enforcement
officers, “looking like C.I.A. agents, dressed in black, with earpieces coming
out,” surrounded the scene. He said the helicopter arrived at 6:25 p.m.
“It was obviously someone important,” he added. “I was assuming there was
a fatality.”
David W. Chen and Ronald Smothers reported from Trenton and
David Kocieniewski from Camden, N.J. Lawrence K. Altman contributed
reporting from New York, and Tina Kelley from Princeton. Maria Newman and
Christine Hauser contributed reporting from New York.
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