House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband killed his brother in a car accident 65 years before his DUI arrest Saturday night, DailyMail.com reported Tuesday.
Paul Pelosi, then 16, was driving when his sports car flipped over in February 1957 in Northern California. David Pelosi, a 19-year-old freshman at the College of San Mateo, was in the car and was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital, Daily Mail.com reported.
A newspaper story at the time said Paul Pelosi, a high school sophomore, would be cited for misdemeanor manslaughter. However, there was no court case and he was exonerated by a coroner’s jury, Daily Mail.com reported.
The California Highway Patrol on Monday issued a press release saying that Paul Pelosi’s 2021 Porsche was struck in Napa Valley by another car late Saturday night.
Pelosi, 82, was booked early Sunday at the Napa County Sheriff’s Office on DUI charges, with a blood alcohol content of 0.08 or higher. Bail was set at $5,000.
“Mr. Pelosi was attending a dinner party at the home of friends near Oakville. He left that party at 10:15 pm Saturday, to drive to his home a short distance away. He was alone in his car,” Paul Pelosi’s lawyer said in a statement on Monday.
The 1957 accident occurred Feb. 22, 1957, at 2:40 a.m. after Paul had picked up his brother from a girlfriend’s house in San Francisco. The siblings had decided to go on a joyride rather than go straight home, Daily Mail.com said.
According to Patrolman Thomas Ganley at the time, David Pelosi told his younger brother, “This is a bad stretch – better slow down,” as they approached a tight curve near the Crystal Springs Dam on the Skyline Highway, which now is California State Route 35.
Paul Pelosi told Ganley that he lost control after trying to slow by shifting gears in the stick shift car.
“The car veered across the road, bounced back from a small embankment, climbed 20 feet up another, spun around and somersaulted simultaneously and ended upside down on the shoulder with both youths underneath,” the San Francisco Examiner reported.
The newspaper said David Pelosi probably died as a result of being strangled by a neck brace he wore to support a fracture sustained after diving into shallow water in Lake Tahoe.
Paul Pelosi suffered a broken collarbone in the crash and was trapped temporarily under the car before freeing himself and calling for aid.
The fatal accident happened six years before Paul Pelosi married Nancy D’Alesandro, the daughter of a former Baltimore mayor.
Paul Pelosi, owner of Financial Leasing Services, has amassed a personal fortune of about $135 million, Daily Mail.com reported.