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Menlo Park police completed interviewing four witnesses in conjunction with the three-car accident on April 23 that killed Pulitzer prize-winning author David Halberstam. Investigators still have not determined who was at fault and have not filed charges, a police spokeswoman said Tuesday.
An “extensive investigation” into the cause of the accident is ongoing, police said.
Mr. Halberstam, 73, of New York, was en route from the East Bay to meet with Atherton resident and NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Y.A. Tittle at his Mountain View insurance company office. Mr. Halberstam was fatally injured when the car he was traveling in was broadsided as it turned left from Bayfront Expressway onto Willow Road. The two cars then crashed into a third car, police said.
Investigators are still trying to determine whether one of the two drivers in the initial collision ran a red light, said Menlo Park Police Department spokeswoman Nicole Acker.
“No one wants to be at fault,” Ms. Acker said. “That’s why it’s so important that these witnesses came forward.”
Mr. Halberstam was a passenger in a car driven by Kevin Jones, 26, a journalism student at the University of California, Berkeley. Mr. Halberstam had given a lecture at an alumni conference over the weekend, said a UC Berkeley spokeswoman.
Mr. Jones told the Associated Press last week that he wanted to apologize to Mr. Halberstam’s family, because he felt so bad about the accident.
Mr. Halberstam died almost instantly when a broken rib punctured his heart, according to Robert Foucrault, the San Mateo County coroner. The force of the collision caused a two-foot indentation on Mr. Halberstam’s side of the car, said Chief Harold Schapelhouman of the Menlo Park Fire Protection District.
Other drivers involved in the crash have been identified by police as Lewis Morris of San Jose and Christian Pinonlara of Redwood City.
Mr. Halberstam was in the Bay Area working on a book about the 1958 NFL championship game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants, according to the Associate Press. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his reporting on the Vietnam War for the New York Times, and went onto a successful career as an author of nonfiction, including “The Best and Brightest,” first published in 1969.
