LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Prosecutors suspect former NFL running back Marshawn Lynch had a blood alcohol level more than twice the legal limit in the hours after police found him asleep in a car near the Las Vegas Strip last year, documents the 8 News Now Investigators obtained Wednesday said.
Lynch’s blood alcohol level was 0.18, documents said. Lynch, 37, faces charges of DUI liquor and/or drugs, driving an unregistered vehicle, and failure to drive in a travel lane for the August incident where Las Vegas Metro police found him asleep in his car. He has pleaded not guilty.
Lynch’s lawyers have argued the case does not constitute a DUI. Nevada law states a person sitting in the driver’s seat of a vehicle is deemed “in physical control,” of the vehicle.
Officers arrested Lynch after a traffic stop at Fairfield and West Utah avenues around 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, Aug. 9, the 8 News Now Investigators first reported. Officers said they found him “asleep behind the wheel with the vehicle in an undrivable condition.” The car, a 2020 Shelby GT500 Coupe, was unregistered, police said.
Police said Lynch was asleep with the driver’s side door open while leaning back in the seat. Lynch began speaking to the officers and then fell back asleep several times, a police report said. Officers smelled alcohol on his breath and in his car and noticed that he had bloodshot eyes and was only wearing one shoe.
In newly filed court documents, his attorneys, David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld, said there is no evidence Lynch drove the car to its final location.
“While [the officer] claims to have ‘observed [sic] a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage emitting from the vehicle, his person, and his breath,’ no evidence proves that Mr. Lynch drank anything or actually operated the vehicle on the night of the encounter,” documents said.
The attorneys have asked a judge to suppress any evidence obtained when officers seized his car’s internal computer in the days after Lynch’s arrest, documents said.
“There was no evidence that the defendant consumed any alcohol after driving to the location he was found,” city attorneys said in court documents, adding officers’ observations led them to believe Lynch was impaired. “The defendant was behind the wheel of a damaged vehicle that had left pieces along the roadway and damaged the city’s roadway and curbs. The defendant had the keys to the vehicle that starts by pressing a button, in his pocket.”
Lynch had faced an additional charge of failure or refusal to surrender proof of insurance, but prosecutors dropped the charge earlier this year.
Lynch was involved in a previous crash on Feb. 22, 2022, that led to a parking ticket, the 8 News Now Investigators first reported last summer. He was driving on Tropicana Avenue near Santoro Drive around 4 a.m. when his Lamborghini Aventador “collided with landscaping and a fence,” police wrote in a report.
In that case, police cited Lynch for the crash and did not arrest him. Court records show Lynch pleaded nolo contendere — accepting violation but denying guilt — to a charge of stopping, standing, or parking prohibited in specified places, which is a misdemeanor. A judge ordered him to pay a $750 fine.
Lynch most recently played for the Seattle Seahawks and played for the then-Oakland Raiders for the 2017-2018 season.
A hearing in the August case was scheduled for Thursday. Lynch’s attorneys noted their client originally lost his privilege to drive, but their petition to “rescind his revocation” was successful after a hearing found an officer insufficient evidence that Lynch was driving.
