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- Sen. Bob Menendez's current wife was involved in a fatal car accident in December 2018.
- Nadine Arslanian hit a man who was jaywalking, according to a police report reviewed by Insider.
- Now Arslanian Menendez, she was never charged in the case, according to the news report.
Nadine Arslanian was involved in a fatal car accident in December 2018, according to a police report from the incident first reported by NorthJersey.com and The Record of New Jersey and reviewed by Insider.
The police report said Arslanian struck and killed a man while driving her Mercedes-Benz on Main Street in Bogota — a borough in suburban Bergen County, New Jersey — on December 12, 2018.
She was not charged in the incident, which first came to light this week.
Arslanian married Sen. Bob Menendez in 2020. Last week, they were both indicted on bribery charges, and federal prosecutors accused them of helping a trio of Egyptian businessmen in exchange for bribes — including bars of gold and a 2019 Mercedes.
The Bogota Police Department said in an investigation into the crash that "Ms. Arslanian was not at fault in this crash," and that the victim was jaywalking.
Menendez told reporters on Wednesday: "It was a tragic accident and obviously we think of the family."
He has denied wrongdoing in the bribery scheme and has so far rejected calls for him to resign from the Senate.
The New York Times reported in 2021 that Menendez and Arslanian Menendez met at a New Jersey IHOP the same month as the fatal car accident, December 2018, though the indictment from the Southern District of New York noted that they had started dating the previous February.
The 2018 crash occurred just after 7:35 p.m., the police report said.
The victim, 49-year-old Richard Koop, was killed in front of his home. Koop was pronounced dead at 9:02 p.m. at Holy Name Medical Center, according to the police report.
Police dashboard-camera video obtained by Insider shows Arslanian speaking with police following the crash. NorthJersey.com and The Record reported, per the video, Arslanian then asked why Koop was present on the road and then said that she "didn't do anything wrong."
Arslanian told police in an interview that the victim "ran across the road and jumped onto the hood" of her car, according to the report.
Police records do not indicate whether Arslanian was given a sobriety test or if she was questioned about whether she had consumed any alcohol or used any sort of drugs.
Arslanian vaulted into the national spotlight after she was indicted alongside Menendez.
Menendez had previously been indicted in 2015, where he was accused of taking bribes to promote a donor's business. The corruption charges were later dismissed in February 2018.
During that time, Menendez's fellow Democrats largely stuck behind him, and he was reelected to a third full Senate term in November 2018.
But this time around, a slew of fellow Democrats — including fellow New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker — have called on Menendez to step down from office as he fights the charges in federal court.