Tennis pro Venus Williams is responsible for a Florida car crash that landed an elderly man in the hospital before his eventual death, according to a report.

Jerome Barson, 78, endured head trauma in the June 9 collision and died two weeks later in an intensive care unit Sunday, TMZ reported Thursday. Barson’s wife reportedly told police she T-boned Williams’ SUV traveling westbound in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., after the athlete abruptly entered an intersection northbound.

“(Williams) is at fault for violating the right of way of (the other driver),” the police report allegedly said. The tennis great blamed the crash on heavy traffic that left her vehicle jutting out into the intersection, according to the report. Cops did not believe she’d been distracted by a device or under drug or alcohol influence.
READ MORE

Man, this sucks. First of all, let me express my deepest sympathies for Mr. Jerome Barson. Made it all the way to 78, just to die and freak car accident like this? That’s just a shame.

And yes I feel sorry for Venus Williams. She is my 2nd favorite female athlete (you can probably guess who’s number 1). And this really sounds like it was just an accident. An innocent mistake. And this is the type of thing that worries me the most, about driving accident. I don’t drink and drive, nor do drugs, and I’ve written about the dangers of texting and driving more than once, so I don’t do that either. But making a sudden stop on the street? That could be any of us.

In fact, this was me, just a couple of days ago! I was driving to my home after work, like I do almost ever weekday afternoon (yeah, still doing the Uber thing), and there’s this particular intersection that I drive through. Again, I do this like 5 times a week, never have any problems. But this evening was different. First, it’s a 4-way intersection with traffic lights. I’m in one of two lanes going north. Stopped at the light, and when the light turns green and we go though the intersection its up a slight hill, and there’s about 2 blocks before the next light. You usually just zoom right through and has you get to the top of the hill that’s where you start to slow down as you get to the next light. But this I zoomed through when suddenly the car in front of me stopped. I hate to hit my brakes to come to a stop before I hit it. And the car behind me had to hit their brakes before they hit me.

Seriously, it all happened so fast, but I recall when I stopped I looked in my review and the car behind me was coming fast, for a couple of second (it felt like an eternity at the time), I thought it was about to hit me. It was one of those things that was over in a few second, but your heart is now pumping a mile a minute. I still don’t know what happened, because of the hills I could just see that several cars ahead of me at stopped too, although the next lane was still going normally, and then they started again and we all just resumed driving.

Now, in over 20 years of driving, I’ve never had a car accident, I’ve come close many times. Sometimes it would have been my fault, and I’m lucky the other driver reacted soon enough to avoid it, and other times it was some other driver’s fault, and I’m lucky I reacted to avoid it in time. But these things can happen in a split second. And you just never know. So, please, be careful out there.

Jerome Barson and wife Linda Barson.