A picture-shy Lindsay Lohan turns twice unlucky on Beverly Boulevard

A picture-shy Lindsay Lohan turns twice unlucky on Beverly Boulevard
After teen actress Lindsay Lohan's May crash led to a state law seeking to restrain paparazzi, a second crash with the same actress has stirred a huge debate on who is to blame. Witness claims that Lindsay overwhelmed by swarming paparazzi may have taken off in her Mercedes-Benz convertible only to collide with a van, has called to question the LA Sheriff's Department statement of paparazzi not being a factor.

The actress and her friend, who had been shopping in Beverly Hills, luckily escaped with minor injuries while two others were rushed to hospital after her black Mercedes-Benz convertible crashed into a van on Tuesday. Witnesses who had seen the actress visiting a restaurant and several stores suggested that the teen-star who had been trying to shake-off the paparazzi was hounded at a clothes store by over a dozen photographers. 43-year old Lori Satzberg who saw a huge group of shutterbugs outside the store said, “The poor girl… She got into her black Mercedes and they literally were like sitting on her car, trying to take pictures of her, she was like yelling at them to get off".

Sponsors

The police statement indicated the matter was “being handled as a traffic collision only", while the owner of the van struck by Lohan's Mercedes, Raymundo Ortega maintained that the actress “was driving really fast” and did not bother “to ask” about his well being after the incident. Other witnesses suggested a “huge explosive sound” with the airbags bursting and a bleeding Lohan quickly running off into the Hideaway antiques store, where the paramedics arrived and she ended up soaking a $5200 chair. Javier Ramirez of the Hideaway store suggested Lindsay as being "very upset" and shaken by the incident.

With the police finding no evidence of alcohol as being the cause of the crash, the eyewitness accounts are giving credence to the idea that indirectly “maybe the paparazzi caused this” as she sped to “to run away from all the pictures". Only on Friday Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger propelled by Lindsay's May crash, signed a law attracting stiff penalties for mediamen and paparazzi, who in all their earnestness hassled celebrities. The law that permits victims under these circumstances to legal recourse against paparazzi claiming thrice the damages suffered becomes effective from January 1.

After Lindsay's earlier accident she had said, "I understand that that's their job and it's always gonna be there to an extent, but when you're running someone off the road, that's a little bit much". Perhaps investigators seeing two crashes within six months of each other with the same celebrity has them thinking, “maybe it is not the paparazzi this time”. But the paparazzi clearly is not above haunting the same victim, after all in the seconds later they were snapping up pictures of a disheveled actress in distress rather than helping out. Meanwhile, the star "Mean Girls" and the more recent "Herbie: Fully Loaded" may hesitate to take to the wheel when in the neighborhood of the Beverly Boulevard, that has been twice unlucky for her.