Audio By Carbonatix
Update 2:35 p.m. 4/16/24: New Times has filed a public records request with the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FDHSMV) for any police body-worn camera and/or dash-camera footage from the crash site. A spokesperson advised that an official police report on the incident might not be available for up to ten days.
New Times also inquired about the condition of the injured trooper; FDHSMV spokesperson Molly Best reports that the trooper has been released from the hospital.
Original story is below:
You may (or may not) have wondered: What has former U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn been up to since leaving office?
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A new video posted on social media may provide answers.
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, a Florida woman claims she was driving on I-75 toward Miami near Big Cypress Reservation around 4:30 p.m. on Monday when a black sports car with tinted windows began tailgating her. Moments after she moved into another lane and allowed the car to pass, traffic came to a standstill.
She realized that the sports car had apparently hit a Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) cruiser, she says.
“Suddenly the car door opens and a man in a wheelchair rolls out,” the self-described social justice activist wrote in a tweet.
In the video, which the woman shared on X (see embed below) and TikTok, the former legislator can be seen sitting in a wheelchair on the median-side shoulder of a highway. In the roadway nearby are a state trooper’s cruiser that appears to have rear-end damage and a black sports coupe that appears to be a Mercedes with considerable damage to its front end.
Some social-media users quickly pointed out that Cawthorn was wearing distinctive shoes that looked like the ones he’d sported days earlier at Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago property.
#breakingnew 🚨🚨Former Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorne who was tailgating me, just rear ended a FL State Trooperâ€¼ï¸ Im SHOOK 🤯😡😳 I was driving on i75S towards Miami in the left lane and this black tinted sports car was tailgating me relentlessly. I accelerated ahead… pic.twitter.com/IfS2EUg1oC
— Alethea⸆⸉ (@Women2Dc) April 15, 2024
Late Monday evening, FHP spokesman Greg Bueno sent New Times the following statement:
“On 4/15/24, at 16:30 hours, [an] FHP State Trooper vehicle was rear-ended on I-75 at mm 60 in Collier County, by a 2021 Mercedes driven by a 28-year-old male of Cape Coral. The State Trooper sustained minor injuries and was transported to an area hospital. The crash remains under investigation.”
Public records indicate that Cawthorn, who has a history of alleged reckless driving incidents, lives in Cape Coral. In a widely reported video from 2019, he is said to have been at the wheel of a Mercedes C Class sports coupe, operating the vehicle’s pedals using a stick cut from a hedge.
Cawthorn, who served from 2021 to 2023 as a U.S. representative for North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District, saw his tenure rattled by controversy, including a House Ethics Commitee penalty for improperly promoting the Let’s Go Brandon digital token. He lost his re-election bid in the 2022 Republican primary.
In 2014, when he was 18, he was seriously injured when a car in which he was a passenger was involved in a crash. Cawthorn, who was on his way back to North Carolina from a spring break trip to Florida, was left partially paralyzed as a result of his injuries.
In March 2022, he was charged with driving with a revoked license while two speeding tickets were pending.
Cawthorn declined to comment when reached by New Times late Monday evening.
This is a breaking story. Please check back for updates.
New Times news editor Izzy Kapnick contributed to this story.
