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Lawyers for the alleged boozed-up New Jersey driver who killed NHL star Johnny Gaudreau and his brother shockingly conceded Monday that their client was in fact over the legal alcohol limit at the time.
But even with the admission, defendant Sean Higgins, 45, balked in court at a plea deal that would have cut his 91-year max prison sentence to 28 years.
Higgins’ team previously claimed that his blood-alcohol content was .075 at the time of the 2024 horror — below the legal limit of .08 and the prosecution’s assertion of .087 — alleging investigators botched his BAC results by only testing his blood plasma rather than whole blood.
But Monday, Higgins’ lawyer, Richard Klineburger, acknowledged that after the defense had its own test conducted on his blood, it was actually .08, putting him just over the legal limit.
“It did come back, based upon the non-tainted tube, it came back as a .08, as opposed to .087,” Klineburg said, suggesting the defense test still yielded a slightly lower result than the prosecution’s.
The stunning revelation came as Higgins, an Army vet, rejected the final offer by the prosecution to plead guilty to two counts of aggravated manslaughter and one count of a first DWI offense in exchange for 28 years behind bars.
Salem County Judge Michael Silvanio told Higgins that if he is convicted at trial on the current counts against him, including reckless vehicular homicide and aggravated manslaughter, he would face a maximum of 91.5 years and wouldn’t be eligible for parole until he’d served 68 years.
Silvanio said that from now on until Higgins’ Jan. 4 trial start, if he decided to plead guilty, it would be what’s known as an open plea — without any promise of a lighter term from the prosecution.
The judge asked Higgins a series of questions Monday about whether he understood what it meant to reject the plea deal.
“Yes, sir,” Higgins told the judge after several questions.
Higgins is accused of mowing down the Gaudreau brothers — both married fathers — with his black SUV as they were cycling on the side of the road in Oldmans Township on Aug. 29, 2024.
Chilling new photos were revealed Monday of the mangled bikes the Gaudreaus were riding when they were hit. Additional images also showed Higgins’ banged-up black Jeep Grand Cherokee.
New schematics of the scene before and after the crash were also released by the defense, which said they cast doubt on whether Higgins was reckless when he struck the men.
The siblings were on their way back from their sister’s wedding rehearsal dinner. She had been scheduled to marry the next day.
Jury selection is set to begin Dec. 1, and openings statements are scheduled for early January.
