Celebrity Bartender Speaks

The David Beckham of polo makes a surprise appearance in John Goodman's DUImanslaughter trial

International polo player and model Ignacio Figueras took the stand in theGoodman trial on Friday.
John Goodman during his trial
News Channel WPTV.com/Live Streaming

The defense for polo mogul/Houston millionaire John Goodman presented its first witnesses in his DUI manslaughter case on Friday, including an internationally famous polo player and model.

The prosecution's case was postponed briefly while Argentine polo celebrity Ignacio "Nacho" Figueras and polo horse trainer Marcos DaSilva took the witness stand for the defense, since both men will be out of Florida next week when they were originally scheduled to testify.

Figueres, who models for Ralph Lauren and has been called "the David Beckham of polo," was a celebrity bartender at the charity event that John Goodman attended on the night of Feb. 20, 2010. Goodman is on trial for causing an accident that killed 23-year-old Scott Wilson after attending the charity event and drinking at another bar. Goodman's blood alcohol content was double the legal limit when taken three hours after the crash, but his lawyers claim that Goodman was not intoxicated at the time of the accident and that crash was caused by a malfunction in his Bentley.

On cross-examination, Figueras describes Goodman as "my patron, my friend," and confirms that Goodman had paid him $120,000 to play polo on his team.

Figueras testified that he did not serve Goodman any drinks at the charity event, nor did he see him consume any drinks, adding that Goodman seemed fine and not impaired at the time he left the White Horse Tavern.

On cross-examination, Figueras describes Goodman as "my patron, my friend," and confirms that Goodman had paid him $120,000 to play polo on his team. He also says that he served 50 or 100 people drinks at the event and admits that he doesn't remember whether others, including fellow polo player and witness Kris Kampen, were intoxicated.

Testifying before Figueras, DaSilva testified about what he heard the night of the accident. DaSilva was living in the barn belonging to Kris Kampen that Goodman says he walked to and consumed alcohol at before using the phone of Lisa Pendleton to call 9-1-1 an hour after the accident.

DaSilva testified that he heard noises the night of the accident before investigators woke him up at 3:30 a.m. but did not get up because he thought it was the horses next door. The lights and television in the office were off when he went to bed but on when he got up in the morning, said DaSilva, but when pressed by prosecutor Ellen Roberts he says the noises came around 2 a.m., when Goodman was in Pendleton's trailer.

The prosecution continued to press its case in the fourth day of testimony. Witnesses included the nurse who treated Goodman and drew his blood at the hopital after the crash, as well as Tate Yeatman, a forensic toxicologist. With the blood alcohol levels shown in the tests, Yeatman says that using "retrograde extrapolation" he can estimate that Goodman had about 12 or 13 drinks in his system (and a BAC of .207 to .237) at the time of the crash, caused by consuming 16 to 18 drinks over the course of the evening.

Yeatman also tells the jury for the first time that Goodman had a small amount of hydrocodone in his bloodstream, which could have had an "additive effect" on the alcohol in Goodman's system.

On cross examination, Yeatman is presented with a hypothetical situation in which Goodman only had four drinks throughout the evening — the number that witnesses have testified they served him. Yeatman says if that was the case that Goodman would have had a BAC of just over .04, below the legal limit, when he was in the accident and would have had to drink approximately half a handle of liquor (approximately half a gallon) after the crash to increase his BAC to the levels that were tested.

But the evidence most harmful to Goodman's case might have come from sheriff's deputy Robert Stephan. Stephan traced a set of boot prints from the site of the accident, which zig-zagged back and forth across the road, leading to the gravel driveway in front of Pendleton's trailer. Stephan said that there were no boot marks in the canal, and after defense attorneys asked him if he checked for boot prints past the trailer near the site of Kampen's barn, he said that in the darkness he couldn't even see the barn.

This testimony comes a day after jurors left the courtroom to see the cars involved in the accident. Goodman's Bentley shows damage in the front, but the Hyundai that Wilson was driving is smashed practically in half, with damage from the front all the way to the rear wheel on the right side. On Thursday jurors also listened to Goodman's 9-1-1 call, and heard Palm Beach County Deputy Sheriff Troy Snelgrove testify that it was obvious from the crash site that Goodman had driven through the stop sign before hitting Wilson.

The prosecution has put on a strong case so far, but we'll see what happens when the defense presents its case next week.

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Winter weather warning

Arctic air will bring hard freeze to Houston this weekend

Photo by Uliana Sova on Unsplash

This weekend could bring ice to Dallas-Fort Worth and beyond.

With many Americans still recovering from multiple blasts of snow and unrelenting freezing temperatures in the nation’s northern tier, a new storm is set to emerge this weekend that could coat roads, trees and power lines with devastating ice across a wide expanse of the South, including Texas.

The storm arriving late this week and into the weekend is shaping up to be a “widespread potentially catastrophic event from Texas to the Carolinas,” said Ryan Maue, a former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“I don’t know how people are going to deal with it,” he said.

Forecasters on Tuesday, January 20 warned that the ice could weigh down trees and power lines, triggering widespread outages.

“If you get a half of an inch of ice — or heaven forbid an inch of ice — that could be catastrophic,” said Keith Avery, CEO of the Newberry Electric Cooperative in South Carolina.

The National Weather Service warned of "great swaths of heavy snow, sleet, and treacherous freezing rain” starting Friday in much of the nation’s midsection and then shifting toward the East Coast through Sunday.

Temperatures will be slow to warm in many areas, meaning ice that forms on roads and sidewalks might stick around, forecasters say.

The exact timing of the approaching storm — and where it is headed — remained uncertain on Tuesday. Forecasters say it can be challenging to predict precisely which areas could see rain and which ones could be punished with ice.

Meteorologists at WFAA say it's too early for an exact forecast across Dallas-Fort Worth. But it's good to start being weather aware.

Here’s what to know:

Cold air clashing with rain to fuel a 'major winter storm’
An extremely cold arctic air mass is set to dive south from Canada, setting up a clash with the cold temperatures and rain that will be streaming eastward across the southern U.S.

“This is extreme, even for this being the peak of winter,” National Weather Service meteorologist Bryan Jackson said of the cold temperatures.

When the cold air meets the rain, the likely result will be “a major winter storm with very impactful weather, with all the moisture coming up from the Gulf and encountering all this particularly cold air that’s spilling in,” Jackson said.

Texas could be a harbinger for other parts of the South
Some of the storm’s earliest impacts could be in Texas on Friday, as the arctic air mass slides south through much of the state, National Weather Service forecaster Sam Shamburger said in a briefing on the storm.

“At the same time, we’re expecting rain to move into much of the state,” Shamburger said.

Low temperatures could fall into the 20s or even the teens in parts of Texas by Saturday, with the potential for a wintery mix of weather in the northern part of the state.

Forecasters cautioned that significant uncertainty remains, particularly over how much ice or snow could fall across north and central Texas.

“It’s going to be a very difficult forecast,” Shamburger said.

An atmospheric river could set up across the Southern U.S.
An atmospheric river of moisture could be in place by the weekend, pulling precipitation across Texas and other states along the Gulf Coast and continuing across Georgia and the Carolinas, forecasters said.

“Global models are painting a concerning picture of what this weekend could look like, with an increasingly strong signal for ice storm potential across North Georgia and portions of central Georgia,” according to the National Weather Service's Atlanta office.

Highway and air travel could be tangled by the storm
Travel is a major concern, as Southern states have less equipment to remove snow and ice from roads, and extremely cold temperatures expected after the storm could prevent ice from melting for several days.

The storm is also expected to impact many of the nation’s major hub airports, including those in Dallas-Fort Worth; Atlanta; Memphis, Tennessee; and Charlotte, North Carolina.

Polar air from Canada to keep northern states in a deep freeze
Unusually cold temperatures are already in place across much of the northern tier of the U.S., but the blast of arctic air expected later this week is “will be the coldest yet,” Jackson said.

“There’s a large sprawling vortex of low pressure centered over Hudson Bay,” Jackson said of the sea in northern Canada that’s connected to the Arctic Ocean. “And this is dominating the weather over all of North America.”

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The David Beckham of polo makes a surprise appearance in John Goodman's DUImanslaughter trial

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