Polo mogul John Goodman asked a friend if she wanted to accompany him to get cocaine, and she refused shortly before Goodman left a Wellington bar alone and allegedly caused a fatal car crash this February, the woman told investigators.
Stacey Shore of West Palm Beach was drinking at the Players Club Bar & Restaurant with Goodman on the night of February 11. Goodman, founder of the International Polo Club Palm Beach, was hanging out with a bunch of polo buddies, buying a round of tequila, and chatting with Shore.
Goodman got his check around 12:30 a.m. But before he left, Shore followed him into the stairway that leads upstairs to the Players Club parking lot.
"Let's go get some cocaine," a drunken, bleary-eyed Goodman suggested.
Shore refused, according to her sworn interview with an investigator
from the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office. "I told him to go home,"
she said.
But Goodman didn't go home. Around 1 a.m. February 12, he plowed through a stop sign on 120th Avenue South and crashed his Bentley into a Hyundai driven by 23-year-old Scott Wilson. The force of the crash capsized Wilson's car into a drainage ditch, where he drowned.
Goodman was arrested last month and charged with DUI manslaughter, vehicular homicide, and failure to render aide.
Drugs were not mentioned in the probable-cause affidavit that led to his arrest, but speculation about his cocaine use has swirled for months. His ex-wife, Carroll Goodman, accused him in court documents of abusing the drug.
"Quite honestly, I've seen him come into the bar late at night with powder
hanging out of his nose," Cathleen Lewter, a Players Club bartender, told a sheriff's investigator in a sworn interview.
Goodman's attorney, Roy Black, has not responded to repeated requests for comment.
UPDATE: Black just released the following statement to the media:
"The police reports are one-sided and ignore the favorable evidence such as all the witnesses who gave statements that Mr. Goodman was not intoxicated. Mr. Goodman intends to vigorously defend himself against the criminal charges, and he is entitled to his day in court. We ask that the public and the media not rush to judgment until all of the facts are known."
