Body camera footage released in Tiger Woods rollover car crash: ‘I’m being arrested?’
Tiger Woods is shown in the back of a patrol car during his arrest in Juniper, Florida, on March 27, 2026. (Martin County Sheriff’s Office)
(MARTIN COUNTY, Fla.) — Body camera footage has been released showing Tiger Woods’ arrest for driving under the influence following his rollover crash in Florida last week.
The footage from the Martin County Sheriff’s Office shows the legendary golfer undergoing a field sobriety test, being placed into handcuffs and then driven from the scene in the back of the patrol vehicle following Friday’s crash.
One of the first deputies to arrive at the scene is seen talking to a man who says he pulled up after the incident and that no one is in the vehicle, which is seen on its side.
“Who’s involved?” the deputy asks.
“It’s Tiger Woods,” the man says.
“Oh, s—, all right,” the deputy says.
When a deputy responds to conduct a field sobriety test as part of a DUI investigation, Woods tells her he was “looking down at my phone, about ready to change the radio station,” when the crash occurred.
He tells the deputy that he had no alcohol to drink that day and takes “a few” medications, several of which are redacted in the video. He says he does not take any illegal substances.
He is seen hiccuping throughout the field sobriety test, at the end of which he is placed in handcuffs, with the deputy telling him she believes his “normal faculties are impaired” due to an “unknown substance.”
“I’m being arrested?” Woods asks.
“Yes, sir,” the deputy responds, saying he is being arrested for DUI.
Woods was charged with driving under the influence with property damage and refusal to submit to a lawful test following last Friday’s accident in Jupiter Island, the Martin County Sheriff’s Office said. No one was injured, officials said.
He was released on bail later Friday.
Woods waived his right to an arraignment and entered a not guilty plea earlier this week, according to court documents.
The accident unfolded when Woods tried to pass a truck in front of him, authorities said. Woods clipped the back of the truck’s trailer, causing the golfer’s SUV to tip on its side, authorities said.
Woods told deputies he was looking down at his phone and changing the radio station and didn’t realize the truck in front of him had slowed down, according to the probable cause affidavit.
Two hydrocodone pills were found in Woods’ pants pocket, the probable cause affidavit said. Hydrocodone is a prescription medication intended to treat severe, chronic pain and common side effects include dizziness and drowsiness.
The golfer had “bloodshot and glassy” eyes and “extremely dilated” pupils, the probable cause affidavit said. Woods’ movement was “lethargic,” but he was also “extremely alert and talkative,” the document said.
A breathalyzer showed no alcohol in his system, but Woods refused to take a urine test, which is used to detect drugs or medication, authorities said.
Woods broke his silence about the crash on Tuesday, saying in a statement, “I know and understand the seriousness of the situation I find myself in today. I am stepping away for a period of time to seek treatment and focus on my health.”
“This is necessary in order for me to prioritize my well-being and work toward lasting recovery,” he said.
On Wednesday, a Marin County judge granted Woods permission to travel out of the U.S. to begin “comprehensive inpatient treatment,” court records show.
Woods won’t participate in the Masters, which begins April 9, tournament officials said.
The PGA Tour said in a statement, “Our focus is on his health and well‑being. Tiger continues to have our full support as he takes this important step.”
A Boeing C-135 Stratotanker / Stratolifter military aircraft known as KC-135 of the United States Air Force USAF configured as Air Tanker Transport for aerial refueling. (Photo by Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Six service members were killed when their refueling aircraft “went down” in friendly airspace in western Iraq, according to U.S. Central Command.
“All six crew members aboard a U.S. KC-135 refueling aircraft that went down in western Iraq are now confirmed deceased. The aircraft was lost while flying over friendly airspace March 12 during Operation Epic Fury,” CENTCOM said Friday.
The KC-135 aircraft went down at approximately 2 p.m. ET on Thursday when two aircraft were involved in “an incident,” CENTCOM said in a brief statement, confirming that “one of the aircraft went down in western Iraq, and the second landed safely.”
Gen. Dan Caine addressed the crashed refueling plane, saying the incident is being treated as an active rescue and recovery mission.
“The incident occurred over friendly territory in western Iraq while the crew was on a combat mission, and again, was not the result, as CENTCOM has said, was not the result of hostile or friendly fire,” Caine said Friday. “We’re still treating this as an active rescue and recovery operation, as CENTCOM announced this morning, four airmen have been recovered, and the Air Force and US Central Command will provide updates as information becomes available.”
The other aircraft involved was also a KC-135 tanker, according to a U.S. official.
The circumstances of the incident are currently under investigation and the identities of the service members who died in the incident are being withheld until 24 hours after next of kin have been notified, officials said.
KC-135 aircraft are not equipped with parachutes and do not have ejection seats, which are primarily in fighter aircraft, officials have told ABC News.
Passengers and crew members of KC-135s instead are trained on how to exit the aircraft when it is on land or on water, officials said.
According to a 2008 Air Force profile of the tanker crews, the move to get rid of parachutes was made because the tankers “seldom have mishaps, and the likelihood a KC-135 crew member would ever need to use a parachute is extremely low.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Les Wexner speaks onstage at the 2016 Fragrance Foundation Awards presented by Hearst Magazines – Show on June 7, 2016 in New York City. (Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images for Fragrance Foundation)
(WASHINGTON) — Members of the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday are set to depose retail billionaire Leslie Wexner, whose wealth fueled Jeffrey Epstein’s fortune before an alleged multimillion dollar theft ended their relationship, newly revealed documents suggest.
After learning that Epstein stole hundreds of millions from him in 2007, Wexner opted to quietly resolve the issue with Epstein, who at the time was being investigated by federal prosecutors for both sex crimes and money laundering, according to emails and a memo later drafted by prosecutors.
A vitally important person in the transformation of Epstein from college dropout to multimillionaire adviser to the ultra-wealthy, Wexner — a businessman behind brands like Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works — has received substantial scrutiny over his association with Epstein since Epstein’s arrest and death by suicide in 2019.
Years after the two severed ties, prosecutors in New York initially included Wexner in a group of potential co-conspirators to be investigated after Epstein was arrested in July 2019, though they later determined there was “limited evidence regarding his involvement,” according to a recently-released 2019 email from an FBI agent who was part of the sex crimes investigation.
“The Assistant U.S. Attorney told Mr. Wexner’s legal counsel in 2019 that Mr. Wexner was neither a co-conspirator nor target in any respect,” a spokesperson for Wexner told ABC News in a statement following the release of Epstein files by the Department of Justice last month. “Mr. Wexner cooperated fully by providing background information on Epstein and was never contacted again.”
Lawyers for Wexner, in a meeting with federal prosecutors about two weeks after Epstein’s arrest, claimed that Wexner “had no knowledge of any inappropriate or unlawful activity with young women by Epstein” and that Wexner’s dealings with Epstein were “more professional than social,” according to a December 2019 prosecution memo summarizing the investigation into Epstein’s potential collaborators.
Wexner’s attorneys said the two ended their relationship after Wexner learned that “Epstein had stolen or otherwise misappropriated several hundred million dollars” from him, according to the memo. The memo stated that Epstein personally profited by repeatedly purchasing properties for the Wexners before buying them for himself at a fraction of the cost.
“The Wexners then decided to cut off Epstein,” prosecutors wrote in the memo summarizing their discussion with Wexner’s counsel.
‘All I can say is I feel sorry’ Epstein was — throughout 2007 — the subject of an ongoing investigation in Florida into sex crimes involving minors that had expanded to probe potential financial crimes and money laundering. The Wexners did not report the alleged theft of their funds to law enforcement and instead resolved the matter privately, according to prosecutors.
Wexner was contacted by federal prosecutors in Florida as early as August 2007 regarding the Epstein investigation, according to handwritten notes released last month by the Department of Justice. Notes from an August 2007 call between an attorney for Wexner and a DOJ representative suggest that prosecutors inquired about Wexner’s interactions with his “money manager,” documentation of their meetings, and whether Wexner ever visited Epstein’s home.
At the time, prosecutors had begun to broaden their investigation to not only cover sex crimes but also potential money laundering and wire fraud, documents suggest.
“She just wanted to know if Les has been to my house,” Epstein emailed his associate Ghislaine Maxwell in August 2007, in an apparent reference to the prosecutor’s contact with Wexner’s lawyer, according to emails obtained by DDOSecrets, a transparency website that received a cache of Epstein emails that were not included in the DOJ’s disclosures.
“That’s odd?? Why” Maxwell responded.
“It’s bulls—, she just wanted to let him know about an investigation is my guess,” Epstein wrote back.
It is unclear if Wexner was aware of the investigation into financial crimes when his attorney was contacted, but in the following months, Wexner began the process of ending Epstein’s role as his money manager, according to emails in the DDOSecrets collection between lawyers for Epstein and Wexner.
“All I can say is I feel sorry. You violated your own number 1 rule … Always be careful,” Wexler emailed Epstein in 2008 days before Epstein reported to prison for soliciting underage sex, according to documents included in DDOSecrets collection.
“No excuse,” Epstein replied.
‘She pretty much wants everything’ According to a 2019 prosecution memo, Wexner’s wife began to look into Epstein’s management of their money after Epstein claimed he was “having legal problems involving an overly aggressive police chief and some sort of massage.”
According to the memo, Abigail Wexner discovered Epstein “misappropriated a significant amount of the family’s funds,” including by purchasing property on the Wexners’ behalf before selling it to himself at a fraction of the cost.
“When confronted, Epstein tried to convince Wexner’s wife that she did not understand the financials and insisted that he had the Wexners’ best interests at heart,” the memo said. “The Wexners did not want to bring unnecessary public attention to the issue, so they withdrew the power of attorney, and hired counsel to negotiate a private settlement with Epstein.”
Epstein resigned from the foundation and all of his roles with Wexner in September 2007, according to an independent review conducted in 2020 of Epstein’s involvement with the Wexner Foundation.
“Mr. Wexner terminated Epstein as his financial advisor, revoked his power of attorney, and directed that he be removed from all bank accounts,” a spokesperson for Wexner said in a statement to ABC News.
As early as October 2007, emails indicate that Epstein began transferring assets back to Wexner.
“When speaking with [Abigail Wexner], she pretty much wants everything,” Wexner’s financial controller told an attorney for Epstein.
Later that year, an attorney for Wexner pushed the process along, telling an attorney for Epstein that his client “is eager to execute documents,” according to the DDOSecrets cache.
Prosecutors wrote in a 2019 memo that Epstein returned $100 million to Wexner by January 2008.
Though the dispute with Wexner was privately resolved by January 2008, Epstein’s attorneys appeared to have mounted a pressure campaign to discredit the prosecutor pursuing a money laundering investigation into Epstein, according to emails in the DDOSECRETS collection. Epstein had signed a non-prosecution agreement in September 2007, but his lawyers continued to negotiate with the government over its terms for several more months.
“In what can only be seen as an attempt to intimidate Mr. Epstein, Ms. Villafana [an assistant U.S. Attorney] then added money-laundering and unlicensed wire-transmittal to the list of violations under investigation even though there was no evidence against Mr. Epstein concerning these charges,” attorneys for Epstein wrote in a letter to the Office of Professional Responsibility dated Feb. 11, 2008.
By June 2008, Epstein began his jail sentence in Palm Beach after reaching the controversial plea deal that allowed him to avoid federal charges.
‘You and I had gang stuff for over 15 years’ Although Epstein and Wexner appear to have severed ties following Epstein’s plea deal, documents released by the DOJ suggest that Epstein may have attempted to rekindle their relationship in subsequent years by drafting a letter reminding Wexner of shared experiences and alleged secrets. In the letter, Epstein wrote that he protected him when he was questioned by Wexner’s wife about his management of their money.
“You and I had ‘gang stuff’ for over 15 years. A great deal of it, that she was unaware of. I had no intention of divulging any confidence of ours, no matter what accusations she made. And she made quite a few,” Epstein wrote in the draft note. Based on publicly available documents, it is unclear whether Epstein ever sent the note to Wexner.
Wexner publicly addressed his relationship with Epstein in August 2019 amid mounting public pressure, saying in a letter to his charitable foundation that he was “deceived” by Epstein.
“As the allegations against Mr. Epstein in Florida were emerging, he vehemently denied them. But by early fall 2007, it was agreed that he should step back from the management of our personal finances. In that process, we discovered that he had misappropriated vast sums of money from me and my family. This was, frankly, a tremendous shock, even though it clearly pales in comparison to the unthinkable allegations against him now,” Wexner wrote.
David Barnes appears in court in Russia on Feb. 13, 2024 (ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — Paul Carter and his friend David Barnes have been speaking with each other since their days in first grade in Huntsville, Alabama, more than 60 years ago.
Yet since Jan. 13, 2022, their conversations over the phone haven’t been the same.
“It’s hard to sit there and hear him just plea, ‘Somebody get me home,'” Carter told ABC News in an interview.
Barnes, a 68-year-old father of two boys, is serving the longest prison sentence of any American who is currently being held in Russia. He was recently relocated to a penal colony hundreds of miles from Moscow.
Tuesday marks four years since Barnes was taken into custody.
His family says Barnes’ arrest came after he traveled from his apartment in The Woodlands, Texas, to Russia at the end of 2021 to try to gain visitation or custody rights to his sons through Moscow’s family court system.
Barnes’ ex-wife, Svetlana Koptyaeva, had taken their children to her native Russia following bitter divorce and child custody proceedings in Montgomery County, Texas. Upon learning of Barnes’ arrival in Russia, his family says she contacted law enforcement in Moscow and accused him of having abused the two boys.
“[She] did not want him to have access to his children, so she made the worst possible accusation that she could come up with,” Margaret Aaron, Barnes’ sister, told ABC News.
Moscow prosecutors’ case against Barnes was unlike any other involving an American jailed in Russia in recent memory, since Barnes was not accused of committing a crime on Russian soil.
Instead, Moscow prosecutors alleged that he abused his sons in suburban Houston, even though Texas law enforcement says they had no involvement in the Russian trial and previously found those allegations to not be credible after conducting their own investigation in response to Koptyaeva’s claims.
“I stand firmly by the allegations against Mr. Barnes,” Koptyaeva wrote to ABC News in an email Monday. “They are supported by my sons’ testimonies and evidence presented in both U.S. and Russian courts.”
Barnes was convicted by a judge in Moscow in 2024 and sentenced to more than 21 years in prison.
“Was it a fair trial? By no means,” Carter said.
After spending years in a detention center in the Russian capital, Barnes was recently transferred to the IK-17 penal colony, according to a spokesperson for his family. The facility previously housed other high-profile detainees like American Paul Whelan, who was freed from Russia in 2024 as part of a prisoner swap.
“We can’t speak for the other people that are in jail in Russia but we absolutely know without a doubt that David is an innocent guy that’s being held on some horrendous charges,” Carter said.
‘Nothing to justify what happened’
While Barnes already stood trial in Moscow, prosecutors more than 6,000 miles away in Texas are hoping that his ex-wife will face a different set of accusations in a courtroom 40 miles north of Houston.
The criminal case against Koptyaeva dates back nearly seven years.
From 2014 to 2019, Texas court records show that Barnes and Koptyaeva were going through an acrimonious divorce and child custody dispute.
“It gradually deteriorated,” Carter said. “He married a woman that he loved and brought two children into the world and, through forces that he didn’t understand or see, it went downhill.”
Koptyaeva raised serious accusations against Barnes during this time, accusing him of abusing their children, which he vehemently denied.
“I can say that the allegations against Mr. Barnes were investigated and evaluated by law enforcement here in Montgomery County and charges were not brought against him,” Montgomery County First Assistant District Attorney Kelly Blackburn told ABC News on Monday.
The custody battle between Barnes and Koptyaeva ultimately resulted in a family law trial.
“A jury also heard evidence regarding the allegations during his custody dispute in the family law trial and even after hearing about the allegations, still awarded Mr. Barnes custody of his two children,” Blackburn said. “And that is when his ex-wife fled with them to Russia.”
The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office alleged that despite a judgment giving Barnes partial custody of their children, Koptyaeva “failed to comply with any condition for travel outside of the United States with the children,” and left the country with the boys on a Turkish Airlines flight from Houston to Istanbul on March 26, 2019.
Interpol published yellow global police notices containing pictures of the children and Koptyaeva was subsequently charged with interference with child custody, a felony crime in Texas.
A warrant for Koptyaeva’s arrest in connection with this charge is still active, according to Blackburn.
“I am not planning to return to the United States,” Koptyaeva told ABC News. “However, if I were to do so, I would plead not guilty, as I did nothing wrong. My actions were solely to protect my children from severe abuse, something any parent would do in my situation.”
A Texas court subsequently designated Barnes as the primary guardian of the children, but since the boys were believed to have ultimately ended up in Russia with Koptyaeva, he was unable to have a relationship with them.
Barnes’ friends and family maintain that Barnes’ desire to legally reunite with his children is what prompted him to travel to Moscow after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted. Instead, he ended up in a series of Russian detention centers.
“There’s nothing to justify what happened,” Carter said.
New Year, new hope?
As Barnes begins his fifth year of detention in Russia, for the first time he is being held in a penal colony a long distance away from Moscow
“From what we understand, the climate is quite a bit different,” Carter said, explaining that while Barnes was often housed in a cell with 14 to 17 other people in Moscow, he has more room to walk around in his new facility.
Carter said that the penal colony is a labor camp of sorts, but Barnes’ labor has largely been restricted to shoveling show. He is worried about his friend’s medical condition though, noting that Barnes has lost around 10 teeth since he has been in custody.
Koptyaeva has maintained that Barnes was justifiably charged and convicted, while Barnes’ relatives and acquaintances have been advocating for the U.S. government to declare that Russia is wrongfully detaining Barnes.
“We commend all efforts to secure Mr. Barnes’ release,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw, Rep. Dale Strong and Sen. John Cornyn wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio in November. “As the Administration continues negotiations with Russia, we urge you to utilize every tool available to facilitate his return to the United States.”
Blackburn, the Montgomery County First Assistant District Attorney, said he is not in a position at this time to say whether Barnes’ detention in Russia is wrongful, noting, “I don’t know what evidence was presented during the trial or anything else about how the proceeding[s] [were] conducted.”
The State Department has not answered ABC News’ questions over whether it considers Barnes’ detention to be wrongful.
“The Department of State has no higher priority than the safety and welfare of American citizens,” the agency said in a statement to ABC News. “U.S. Embassy officials continue to provide consular assistance to Mr. Barnes.”
Carter said that there has been increased advocacy against Barnes’ detention recently and that he is hopeful that the Trump administration will be able to bring his friend home — but fears Barnes being devastated if he is left out of another prisoner exchange.
“He’s been in some insufferable conditions and it doesn’t need to continue,” his friend said.
ABC News’ Tanya Stukalova contributed to this report.
