Retired NBA star Lamar Odom was involved in yet another car crash last week. WFMZ reports that the wreck took place in Los Angeles at about 3:00 a.m. on Monday morning and that he is currently “totally fine.” Odom was reportedly on his way home from a friend’s house when, according to his spokesperson, “his phone fell and it dropped on the floor and when he reached out for it, his arm went with it.”
That move caused him to drive his white Mercedes-Benz into a parked car that then hit another parked car. No one was in either of the parked cars, and while it’s currently not clear how fast Odom was driving at the time, it was reportedly fast enough to leave him “a little shaken up” after “all three of his airbags deployed.”
When police arrived, they questioned Odom, who has a history of alcohol and drug abuse, about his sobriety but reportedly took him at his word that he hadn’t been drinking and wasn’t on drugs because he now owns addiction recovery centers and stays sober. That was apparently enough for the Los Angeles Police Department, which didn’t perform a sobriety test on the retired athlete.
Assuming his version of events is accurate, Odom’s latest crash is once again a reminder to put your damn phone away while you’re driving. And if it happens to fall out of a mount for some reason, it’s much safer to pull over and park before rooting around in the floor for it. Even if your phone gets damaged in the process, fixing it will still probably cost less than getting into a wreck.
This also isn’t Odom’s first phone-related car crash. Back in 2011, Odom’s driver hit a motorcyclist who then hit a teenage pedestrian who later died in the hospital. At the time, he blamed the fatal wreck on his driver failing to see the motorcyclist while in the process of handing Odom a phone.