A Philadelphia resident had to be hospitalized after his sport utility vehicle was rear-ended and flipped by another driver on Route 295 in 2009.
But as the Star-Ledger tells in a recent investigative report, when Clayton Tanksley filed a lawsuit against the driver who hit him in an attempt to collect damages for medical bills, his lawyer found out that the person whose name was on the N.J.State Police accident report did not exist. The other driver had provided a false identity.
That driver, according to a Star-Ledger report, was Sgt. William Billingham, a state trooper working undercover on an investigation. After crashing into Tanksley's car on Route 295 in Lawnside, he supplied his fake State-trooper issued identity to the investigating officers.
Now the N.J. State Police are launching an internal investigation, into both the use of undercover ID cards and drunk-driving incidents involving troopers.
In the Tanksley case, Billingham told investigators at the time of the accident that he had fallen asleep, when he collided with the Philadelphia man's Mitsubishi Montero, causing the car to turn over in an accident that shut down three lanes of Route 295.
Tanksley and his lawyer's spent months pursuing the fake identification to pay off doctor bills. The Star-Ledger said that while they were doing so, State Troopers knew that the name that was included in the crash report was bogus.
Two years after the accident, a N.J. prosecutor moved forward on the case, charging Billingham with assault by auto, and alleging the trooper was drunk.
Now, the Star-Ledger says, State Police command staff have launched an "extensive review" of its policies for officers using undercover identification cards.
