Former congressman Madison Cawthorn is accused of tailgating and rear-ending a Florida Highway Patrol car on Monday afternoon in Collier County, according to reports by People. Locals may remember that ten years before his ascent and fall in Congress, he was engaged in a much more serious accident that resulted in partial paralysis.
A spokesperson for the Florida Highway Patrol, Lt. Gregory Bueno, verified via email on Tuesday that at about 4:30 p.m. on Interstate 75 in Collier County, a 2021 Mercedes rear-ended a patrol car, a Dodge Charger. He said that a 28-year-old male from Cape Coral was operating the Mercedes, but he would not identify the driver and said that a report would not be available for around ten days.
According to reports, the FHP trooper was transferred to a nearby hospital with minor injuries. The Mercedes driver received a ticket for breaking Florida's Move Over Law, which mandates that while approaching a police car stationed on the shoulder of the road, drivers must move over a lane.
Who is Madison Cawthorn?
On August 1, 1995, Cawthorn was born in Asheville, North Carolina. He played in the Asheville Saints football league, which comprises homeschooled high school students, and received his education at home from Hendersonville, North Carolina, through the 12th grade. He used to work at a Chick-fil-A restaurant as a teenager.
Cawthorn, a senior in high school at the age of 18, was a passenger in a vehicle that Bradley Ledford, a friend from school, was driving. The vehicle smashed into a barricade used for construction and caught fire. Ledford extracted Cawthorn from the vehicle, as reported in a News-Journal article dated 2015. He was taken to Halifax Health Medical Center for Cawthorn.
Cawthorn required numerous surgeries for his appendix, stomach, ankle, pelvis, and spine. Following his five-week sojourn in Halifax, he relocated to an Atlanta rehabilitation facility.
Political Career
From 2021 to 2023, Cawthorn represented North Carolina's 11th congressional district in the United States Congress. Cawthorn, a Christian and constitutional conservative, became the first member of Congress to be born in the 1990s. He is a member of the Republican Party.
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