Death
Halberstam died on April 23, 2007 in a traffic accident in Menlo Park, California near the Dumbarton Bridge. He was in the area to give a talk at an event at UC Berkeley and was en route to Mountain View to interview Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Y.A. Tittle for a book about the 1958 NFL Championship. Halberstam's driver Kevin Jones, a graduate student at the UC Berkeley Journalism School who was given the opportunity to drive Halberstam to the interview by the department, pleaded no contest to misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter charges. Jones proceeded from a controlled left turn lane on California State Route 84 against opposing traffic and a red light, and his vehicle was then hit broadside on the front passenger side, with fatal consequences for his passenger, Halberstam. Jones was subsequently sentenced to five days in jail (with the sentencing judge recommending that the sentence be served in the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office's work program rather than actually behind bars), to 200 hours of community service, and to two years of probation. The judge also ordered Jones to complete a driving course. The California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Jones's driver's license for a period of one to three years.
After Halberstam's death, the book project was taken over by Frank Gifford, who played for the losing New York Giants in the 1958 championship game, and was published by HarperCollins in October 2008 with an introduction dedicated to David Halberstam.
Read more about this topic: David Halberstam
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