A pill-popping New Jersey man had a shocking .30 blood-alcohol count when he got behind the wheel and mowed down two teenage girls, prosecutors revealed.
Eugene Baum, 44, had a blood-alcohol level nearly four times the legal limit after the April 20 crash, according to a toxicology report made public in court Thursday.
Experts yesterday reacted with stunned amazement that Baum was even able to get his car started.
“If it was me [who drank that much], I’d be dead,” Kerry Stapelton, a victim’s advocate at Mothers Against Drunk Driving, told The Post.
“You’d really have to work at getting that drunk. You’d have to drink a lot and for a long time.”
He added, “In order to be able to get to that BAC and be able to function, he probably drinks a big part of his life.”
Baum allegedly told cops he drank a half-liter of vodka on the night he struck cousins Athear Jafar, 16, and Mayada Jafar, 15. He also said he’d taken the anti-depressant Librium, according to authorities.
But his blood-alcohol reading suggests that he’d had even more than that to drink, although it’s unclear if the pills could have interfered with the high BAC.
“He would have had at least 15 drinks,” said Stapelton.
His extreme level of intoxication even had officials agog.
“[It’s] the highest I’ve ever seen,” Morris County Assistant Prosecutor Ralph Amirata told The Record of Bergen County.
Baum’s level of drunkenness is so high that Morris County officials have indicated that they will ramp up his current charge of death by auto to aggravated manslaughter when they go to a grand jury.
He’s charged with running down the girls in Kinnelon, N.J., as they walked to the movies. They died instantly.
Baum’s lawyer, John Iaciofano, declined to comment on the results of the blood-alcohol report, saying he hadn’t seen them.
“He’s devastated right now,” said Iaciofano.