Costa Mesa Police Det. Michael Delgadillo, who died in a single-car collision last month, had a blood-alcohol content of 0.14 percent, according to the Orange County coroner.
That's nearly twice the legal limit, as any cop flunking you on the touch-the-nose test will tell you.
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The 57-year-old father of four and 32-year veteran of the Costa Mesa force was alone in his Honda Accord when it smashed into a cement column on Bristol
Street beneath the 55 freeway after 10 p.m. March 5. Delgadillo died at Western Medical
Center in Santa Ana early the next morning.
Costa Mesa Detective Mike Delgadillo Dies in Car Crash
Blood was drawn from him shortly after the accident and before he died. The coroner's office, which had already ruled the death an accident caused by blunt-force trauma, later received the toxicology report that showed his blood-alcohol content exceeded California's legal limit for driving, which is 0.08 percent.
Court records indicate small amounts of painkillers
were also found in Delgadillo's system, but not enough where it should have effected his driving.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.