WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — Kerry Kennedy swerved her Lexus into a truck, damaging the car and blowing a tire, but kept driving and later was slumped at her steering wheel and disoriented, motorists testified Monday at her drugged-driving trial.

Her attorney said she was “sleep-driving” because she had accidentally taken a sleeping pill.

Kennedy, ex-wife of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, daughter of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and niece of President John F. Kennedy, went on trial Monday in suburban New York. Several Kennedy relatives, including her mother, Ethel Kennedy, sat in the gallery’s front row.

In his opening statement, defense lawyer Gerald Lefcourt told the six jurors that Kennedy was not disputing that she drove erratically. But he said it happened because Kennedy accidentally took an Ambien sleeping pill that morning instead of her thyroid medication.

Kennedy’s blood tests revealed a small amount of the sleeping drug zolpidem.

“The zolpidem kicks in. It shuts her down. She’s in a state of sleep-driving,” Lefcourt said.

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Prosecutor Stefanie DeNise said even if the pill were taken accidentally, Kennedy violated the law “by failing to stop and pull over as she felt the onset of symptoms.”

But Lefcourt said Kennedy never knew what the drug was doing to her. He said the medication “hijacks your ability to make decisions.”

Kennedy was arrested in 2012 after her car hit a tractor-trailer on an interstate highway near her home outside New York City. She drove to the next exit, where she failed three of four sobriety tests, police said.

One fellow motorist, Henry Myers of North Salem, said he saw Kennedy swerve her car into the tractor-trailer on Interstate 684 and keep driving despite damaging her tire.

“I saw smoke. I figured the car would stop,” he said. When it didn’t, he called 911.

Another driver, William Carlino, of Armonk, testified that a few minutes later he found Kennedy slumped over the wheel and disoriented, with the car running, in a left-turn lane on Route 22. Carlino said her car had one wheel without a tire.

He said he ran from his car to hers and knocked on her window, which seemed to startle her.

 


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