Nancy Pelosi’s husband was arrested over the weekend for DUI in Napa, California, but this is not his first brush with bad driving, as it was recently reported that he was involved in a tragic car accident that killed his older brother decades ago.
Paul Pelosi was just 16 years old when he flipped his sports car near San Mateo, California, in the early morning of February 22, 1957. His older brother, David Pelosi, 19, was sitting in the passenger seat and suffered a neck fracture attributed to a neck brace he was wearing due to a previous injury received after he dived into a shallow part of Lake Tahoe. The brace strangled him, and he was then rushed to Mills Memorial Hospital in San Mateo where he was later pronounced dead.
Paul suffered a broken collarbone but was able to free himself from the wreck and summon help, according to a local report as published by the Daily Mail.
Paul had picked up his older brother from a girlfriend’s house and were on a “joyride” when Paul lost control of the car. David was said to have told his younger brother, “This is a bad stretch — better slow down,” before the crash occurred. Paul told local authorities that he tried to heed his brother’s warning and shifted gears to slow down but lost control of the vehicle.
The local report said that “The car veered across the road, bounced back from a small embankment, climbed 20 feet up another, spun around and somersaulted simultaneously and ended upside down on the shoulder with both youths underneath.”
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Thomas Ganley, the patrolman responding to the scene, intended to cite Paul for misdemeanor manslaughter, but the case never made it to court and the high school sophomore was exonerated by a coroner’s jury who deemed the crash to be a tragic accident.
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We are learning about this fatal wreck in the wake of Paul’s arrest following his drunken crash this weekend following a late-night dinner party. Paul, now 82, was driving home alone when he crashed. His lawyer said Paul had stopped at an intersection before turning onto State Route 29 when his 2021 Porsche “was hit on the back fender by a Jeep” driven by Jesus Lopez. He was charged with two misdemeanors: one count of driving under the influence and one count of driving with a blood alcohol content level of 0.08 or higher, but posted the $5,000 bail and was released.
Paul has other other driving dustups in the past, most recently in 2011 when he was cited once for running a red light and once for veering over the center line while driving.
The 1957 crash happened six years before Paul married Nancy D’Alesandro, daughter of the mayor of Baltimore, who went on to become the first women Speaker of the House of Representatives as Nancy Pelosi.
Nancy was not with Paul at the time of the crash but was in Rhode Island for her commencement address to Brown University. It is claimed the Speaker of the House doesn’t drink, although both she and her husband own a Napa winery.