Multimillionaire polo mogul John Goodman has taken a lot of heat for leaving the scene of the Wellington car crash that killed 23-year-old Scott Wilson this February. But interview records from the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office
investigation show that the founder of the International Polo Club Palm Beach wasn't entirely callous about the plight of the driver he hit.
After allegedly plowing through a stop sign and smashing his Bentley into the Hyundai driven by Wilson, Goodman stumbled out of his car and began walking to a nearby farm in search of a phone. Meanwhile, the mangled Hyundai lay capsized in a drainage ditch, with Wilson still strapped in the driver's seat, drowning.
According to sheriff's investigators, Goodman "made no attempts to flag down any vehicles for help," and didn't call 9-1-1 until 54 minutes after the first witness reported the crash.
But when he called, he was clearly worried. "I hit something and it had to have been another car," he told the dispatcher. "Is everybody okay?" he asked, repeating the question over and over during the brief conversation.
"I'm not sure, sir," the dispatcher finally said. "Are you okay?"
When he returned to the crash site, deputies put Goodman in an ambulance so he could have his broken wrist examined at Wellington Regional Hospital. On the way, Goodman kept asking if there was another victim of the crash, according to a paramedic who was in the ambulance with him.
"He was very worried about the other driver," firefighter Scott Mock told a sheriff's investigator.
Later that day, Goodman's brother, Greg, came to visit him in the hospital. John borrowed Greg's phone to call his girlfriend, Heather Colby, in Atlanta. She asked Goodman if he was okay.
"Well...how good can I be?" Colby told investigators he responded. "Somebody's dead."
Goodman has pleaded not guilty to charges of DUI manslaughter, vehicular homicide, and failure to render aid.
