Earlier this week, celebrity blog TMZ.com reported that retired NFL star and Heisman trophy winner, Eddie George, 38, was the passenger in a car being driven by 21-year-old British pro golfer Rachel Connor when she was busted for driving drunk at 2AM.
The incident occurred on Wednesday, Feb. 7, in Sarasota, Florida. George and Connor were having dinner with friends after attending a two-day charity golf event together. After dinner, George and Connor climbed into her car for what would have been a short drive to his hotel.
But soon after leaving the restaurant, cops pulled Connor’s weaving car over. It was determined that Connor was stumbling drunk — she could barely walk and she couldn’t count in numerical order.
The police report indicates that Connor’s breathalyzer test results were .133 and a .137 — way over the legal limit to drive safely.
Yet, George insisted that neither he nor his friends felt that Connor was too impaired to drive. That’s probably what George told his wife, Tamara Johnson, aka “Taj” of 90s R&B group SWV.
After meeting at a shopping mall in 1994, George, the former Tennessee Titan, and Taj, the lead singer of SWV, were married in June 2004. They have a son together, Eriq Michael, 7. And Johnson is also stepmother to George’s first son, Jaire David.
After the blogs got ahold of the story, George, who is the original founder of the notorious gossip slinging message board LipstickAlley.com, released a statement clarifying that he was not cheating on Taj.
Sadly, the evidence says otherwise.
There are so many questions: where was his car? How did he arrive at the restaurant? Would a prudent man have gotten into a car being driven by any 21-year-old, non-related female at 2AM? It really doesn’t matter whether she was drunk or not — he was in a car with a 21-year-old blond at 2AM. How does a man explain those circumstances to his wife? Didn’t he learn anything from Eddie Murphy?
Eddie George’s statement:
“As part of a two-day charity golf event, a group of us who had played together on Tuesday celebrated at dinner. The group included Rachel Connor.”
“After dinner, as everyone left the restaurant together, we realized that Rachel lived the closest to where I was staying. So she offered to drop me off. I believed her to be competent to drive and not impaired at all. We were stopped shortly after we left.”
“At first, I hesitated to respond to this story. But I now see that people are willing to think the worst. So my wife, Tamara , and I believe we have to address this.”
“Rachel Connor was simply trying to be nice by offering me a ride. No one in our group felt she was impaired or we all would have stopped her from driving.”