The off-duty Jersey cop at the wheel during a wrong-way fatal accident on Staten Island had been busted for drunken driving after crashing into a deli in 2011, police records reveal.
Pedro Abad Jr., a Linden police officer, swerved off the road in a black 2010 Audi A5 and hit a bus stop sign, a street sign and a stop sign before slamming through the side of New Way Supermarket in Roselle, N.J., at 3:46 a.m. on Jan. 22, 2011, according to a police report.
His car ended up inside the store, causing heavy damage to the building.
Ravi Patel, 26, who co-owns the deli with his dad, recalled getting a call in the middle of the night that the store’s alarms had been triggered.
“We didn’t know it was a crash,” Patel told the Daily News Wednesday.
“It wasn’t until we got to the corner. We saw the car inside — the whole car!”
It took three months for all the damage to be fixed and the damage was so extensive the store was closed for the first three weeks of repairs.
“Everything was messed up,” Patel said. “The register was on the ground, everything. The door doesn’t even shut still because of the crash.”
Reeking of alcohol, Abad, 27, was rushed from the scene to University Hospital in Newark, where he was charged with driving while intoxicated and careless driving.
Inside the ambulance he admitted to having two mixed drinks at a local club, according to the police report.
“He should have learned his lesson,” Patel said. “You don’t screw up again. That’s just wrong. Look at how many lives he took.”
Investigators are continuing to probe whether Abad was drinking with his three passengers at Staten Island strip club Curves before Friday’s crash. Abad was driving a Honda northbound in the southbound lanes of the West Shore Expressway when he hit a tractor-trailer head-on at 4:50 a.m., killing two men in the car.
Hours before the deadly crash, Abad recounted in an online post his toast at a Roselle, N.J., bar earlier that night, beneath a photo of three glasses filled with 70-proof Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Fire.
Killed in the gruesome Staten Island crash were Linden cop Frank Viggiano, 28, and passenger Joseph Rodriguez, 28. Another Linden cop in the car, Patrik Kudlac, 23, and Abad remain hospitalized in critical condition.
Rodriguez’s funeral was held Wednesday morning at St. Elizabeth Church in Linden.
Abad also received violations for drunken driving and refusing a Breathalyzer test on Feb. 26, 2013, after he crashed in Rahway, N.J., New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission records show.
During that incident, Abad was caught on camera stumbling and slurring his words while asking for an officer he said he knew from the academy, NJ.com reported.
His license was suspended for seven months in the wake of the Rahway crash, records show.
In addition to the two drinking-related crashes, Abad was involved in six other accidents going back to 2005, state records show.nydailynews.com