IS THIS NEWS ?

I dont know, but I think in the Star-Ledger's attempt to pull off a scoop they sacfrice independent analysis. They are giving too much play to the trooper and his extra marital affair. There are many reasons the trooper may have been distracted and crashed. He may have heard the Yankees or Mets were losing their game, or maybe the news radio station had a really sad story on, or maybe he heard a funny joke.

To turn a posting on a website into a full front page story is dangerous. There are obvious reasons why the man put the posting out there. He has hatred towards the trooper over the affair. The paper owes us all alot more then the tabloid story it has written. Facts should determine the story not the need for a scoop. The harm in running the story the Star-Ledger ran is that few will recall the outcome of the investigation if the trooper is found not to have been distracted by the email. But everyone will know he had an affair, and I am not sure how fair that is.


Author of angry e-mail to trooper says: 'I hope it didn't cause the crash'
Sunday, April 22, 2007
BY JOSH MARGOLIN AND MARK MUELLER
Star-Ledger Staff

In the days and hours leading up to the crash that critically injured Gov. Jon Corzine, the governor's driver received a flurry of angry communications from the husband of a woman with whom the driver was romantically entangled.

Investigators are now examining whether those communications -- a phone call, text messages and an e-mail -- had any effect on trooper Robert Rasinski's mental state as he was driving 91 mph on the Garden State Parkway April 12.

Rasinski's relationship and its recent discovery by the woman's husband, a Berkeley Heights police sergeant, have taken the 10-day-old crash investigation in an unusual, even surreal new direction as Corzine slowly recuperates from his injuries.

The governor remained in critical but stable condition at Cooper University Hospital in Camden, but in encouraging signs, he managed to speak with family members and take in small amounts of clear liquid yesterday, the chief of the hospital's trauma department said in a statement. Corzine has been breathing without the aid of a ventilator since Friday afternoon.

In response to questions about the dispute between Rasinski and the Berkeley Heights officer, Detective-Sgt. Michael Mathis, State Police Superintendent Rick Fuentes confirmed late Friday that investigators were looking into an unspecified "allegation" made against the trooper. Fuentes did not elaborate.

But new details emerged yesterday in a pair of online postings written by Mathis. A 22-year police veteran, Mathis authored the postings in a Statehouse forum on NJ.com, a Web portal for The Star-Ledger and its sister newspapers. He later confirmed in a phone call that the postings were his.

Mathis, 40, wrote that he discovered a month ago that his wife, 36-year-old Susan Mathis, was having a 2 1/2-year affair and that they are now in the process of divorcing.

He said he confronted Rasinski for the first time in a phone call April 10, two days before the crash, and then exchanged text messages with him April 11 and the morning of April 12.

Just minutes before the crash, as Corzine's two-vehicle motorcade sped northward on the Parkway in Atlantic County around 6 p.m., Mathis sent an e-mail to Rasinski, the officer wrote.

State Police investigators are seeking to determine whether Rasinski saw that e-mail, perhaps through the use of a BlackBerry. Attached to the e-mail was a Mathis family photo, a law enforcement official with knowledge of the case said.