Tiger Woods did not get 'different treatment' from authorities after crash, sheriff says

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Tiger Woods did not receive special treatment from authorities after his February crash that left him with serious leg injuries, Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said Wednesday.

Authorities have remained insistent there were no signs of impairment when deputies arrived at the scene. Woods was reportedly found unconscious and when he came to, he told deputies he "did not remember driving" and wasn’t sure how the crash happened, USA Today has reported.

Villanueva said the department needed to hire more Drug Recognition Experts (DRE), something he said was a lesson learned when investigating Woods’ crash.

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"For anybody suggesting he somehow received any different treatment than anybody else, he did not," Villanueva said, USA Today reported. "I can tell you this: We do need more drug-recognition experts within the department. We need to hire more, but then again, that costs money. We need to train more. We’re going to be training with the resources we have to increase our pool of available DRE experts."

"And that’s something that obviously, lessons learned from every incident and how can we can apply what we learned to future events and to make ourselves more, a better organization and more effective? And those are one of the things we’re going to be doing," he added.

TIGER WOODS BACK HOME IN FLORIDA TO CONTINUE RECOVERING FROM INJURIES IN HORRIFIC CAR WRECK

DREs are tasked with determining whether a driver was impaired at the scene of a crash. Sheriff’s officials did not call for DREs at the scene, despite authorities seeing no signs that Woods made any intention to brake or stop before the single-vehicle rollover crash.

Authorities executed a search warrant on the black box located inside the 2021 Genesis SUV that Woods crashed. Villanueva said authorities "learned a few things" when extracting data from it, according to the paper.

Woods revealed in a statement Tuesday that he returned home to Florida to continue to recover from his injuries.

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"Happy to report that I am back home and continuing my recovery. I am so grateful for the outpouring of support and encouragement that I have received over the past few weeks," Woods said in a statement to Golf Digest and in a subsequent tweet. "Thank you to the incredible surgeons, doctors, nurses and staff at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. You have all taken such great care of me and I cannot thank you enough."

"I will be recovering at home and working on getting stronger every day," he added.