Menendez's wife was within speed limit when she hit and killed man in 2018, report says

Nadine Arslanian Menendez, the wife of Sen. Bob Menendez, was traveling between 22 and 27 mph on a road with a 30 mph speed limit at the time she hit and killed a pedestrian in 2018, a newly released investigative report concluded.

The Bergen County Prosecutor's Office Fatal Accident Investigation Unit was among the agencies to respond to the scene on the night of Dec. 12, 2018. Its 30-page report, obtained Wednesday by NorthJersey.com through a public records request, says that after Arslanian's car hit and killed Richard Koop, 49, he slid 37 feet away from impact.

Arslanian was driving her Mercedez-Benz on Main Street in Bogota when she hit and killed Koop, according to a Bogota Police Department report.

Arslanian, 51 at the time, told police that Koop had jumped on her windshield and that she never saw him.

"It is my opinion that the driver of the Mercedes-Benz could not avoid the collision with the pedestrian attempting to cross the roadway," Officer Dennis DeAngelis of the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office Fatal Accident Investigation Unit wrote in his report.

Arslanian — who began dating Menendez in February 2018 and married the senator in October 2020 — was not charged or issued any summonses after the crash.

The BCPO investigation report appears to differ in some details from a surveillance video of the accident provided by the Koop family.

Arslanian was recently indicted in a bribery scheme along with her husband, who is the senior senator from New Jersey and until the indictment chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

A month after the 2018 crash, according to an indictment brought by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Arslanian was texting Wael Hana, an Egyptian American businessman also indicted in the bribery scheme, about her lack of car. Hana later provided her with a 2019 Mercedez-Benz C-300 convertible, the indictment says.

'No apparent odors' in the car

The BCPO investigation report included an examination of Arslanian's car inside and out.

There were "no apparent odors" noticed inside the car and the reports indicate that Arslanian was never tested for alcohol or drugs.

The Mercedes airbag never deployed and much of the damage to the car was to the windshield, which was "completely broken with a three-inch hole in the center," the BCPO report says.

The report makes no mention of skid marks at the scene.

The medical examiner's report, which was obtained by NorthJersey.com, listed Koop's cause of death as blunt head trauma and a fractured neck. He also sustained several other injuries including multiple broken bones and contusions. Koop also had alcohol and marijuana in his system, according to the report.

Parent, fisherman, bar 'dad': Who was Richard Koop, the man Nadine Menendez killed with a car?

Discrepancies

Both the Bogota Police and the report compiled by an officer from the prosecutor's office agreed that Koop was crossing midblock and not at a designated intersection.

"He subsequently crossed in front of a parked vehicle," the prosecutor report said.

The report states four times that Koop walked in front of a parked BMW and in one spot the report speculates that may have "obstructed his view as well of that of the driver."

Surveillance video shows that Koop was walking behind the BMW and that Arslanian struck him and then the parked BMW.

"The Mercedes then struck the parked BMW, and subsequently braked," the BCPO report said. "The Mercedes stopped a short distance from the crash."

The surveillance video shows Arslanian stop her car after hitting the BMW, but after 24 seconds she reverses her car so that it is next to the parked car. A couple of seconds later she inches up. About 40 seconds later, she drives her car around Koop's body and out of the surveillance video frame.

Arslanian was not injured according to the BCPO report, but the Bogota police report stated that her hands were bleeding, and she was checked by Holy Name EMS before refusing medical treatment.

The Bogota report mentions that while Arslanian initially agreed to allow police to search her phone, she quickly changed her mind. It goes on to say that the department subpoenaed her phone records.

Neither the Bogota report or the report from the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office provides any further details about what was received, if anything, related to that subpoena despite the fact that both were submitted weeks after the crash.

Collision 'could not be avoided'

Last week, Liz Reiben, a spokesperson for the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, said that the agency’s Fatal Accident Investigation Unit is responsible for “investigating fatal and serious bodily injury motor vehicle crashes, which involve criminal recklessness” throughout Bergen County.

That includes crashes where someone dies or is seriously injured, when someone is known to be or possibly is driving while intoxicated, with excessive speed, while using a cellphone, or while asleep behind the wheel, as well as cases involving hit and run, police pursuit, an emergency vehicle or if multiple fatalities factor in the collision.

The unit is also available to assist towns within the county in investigations that are complex but don’t fall within that criteria.

Reiben said that the unit also assists local police departments by providing manpower at motor vehicle crash sites that are not suspected to be criminal, but the local police department requires additional personnel to complete its investigation.

Reiben said that in the case of the crash that took Koop’s life, the “Bogota Police Department requested the assistance of members of the Fatal Accident Investigation Task Force after determining that no criminality was suspected to be involved.”

But in the report submitted by DeAngelis of the Fatal Accident Investigation Unit on January 28, 2019, he says that he “recommended that the Bogota Police not issue any summonses to the driver of the Mercedes-Benz, as it is my opinion that the collision could not be avoided.”

Neither the prosecutor’s office nor the Bogota borough attorney provided clarification as to when the decision was made not to charge Arslanian or if in situations like this a local department would typically defer to the fatal unit’s expertise.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Wife of Bob Menendez was not speeding during fatal car crash