ROSELLE — After Linden police Officer Pedro Abad, Jr. smashed his Audi A5 sedan through the wall of the New Way Supermarket in Roselle four years ago, he was arrested for drunk driving. But the 27-year-old would never be convicted of the charge.

The lawyer for Abad, the driver in the wrong-way Staten Island crash last week that left two men dead and critically injured himself and another officer, claimed police illegally took a blood sample from Abad, without obtaining a search warrant to get the sample, according to papers filed in the 2011 court case by Greggory Marootian, a Livingston lawyer who specialized in drunk-driving cases.

Marootian also claimed that Roselle police improperly obtained statements from Abad.

Marootian Thursday declined to comment about the hearing, or Abad's accident.

This was the first of two drunk-driving charges filed against Abad. On Feb. 26, 2013, he was charged with driving while intoxicated after he hit a parked car in Rahway.

On March 20, Abad drove his Honda Civic the wrong way on the West Shore Expressway in Staten Island, crashing head-on into a tractor-trailer near on Arthur Kill Road, according to New York City police. Two passengers, fellow Linden Officer Frank Viggiano, 28, and Linden resident Joseph Rodriguez, 28, died in the crash. Abad and a third Linden officer, Patrik Kudlac, 23, were critically injured and remain in separate Staten Island hospitals. According to NYPD, the men had left Curves strip club in Staten Island just before the accident. It is still unclear if Abad had been drinking that night, but the NYPD said they have obtained a warrant to test his blood for alcohol.

On Jan. 22, 2011, Abad crashed his black Audi A5 through the wall of the New Way Supermarket on St. George Avenue in Roselle, according police.

A Roselle firefighter at the scene told police he smelled a strong odor of alcohol on Abad and said Abad stated in the ambulance that he had had two mixed drinks at a local club, according to the police report. Roselle Officer Kendall Vaughn also reported smelling alcohol on Abad.

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He was charged with driving while intoxicated and careless driving, and taken to University Hospital in Newark. Abad was unable to give a statement because of his injuries, according to the report, but a Roselle officer went to the hospital to get a blood sample.

Five months later, on June 10, 2011, Marootian filed a motion in Roselle Municipal Court seeking to suppress the blood sample and statement allegedly made by Abad.

Marootian said the state had to prove the "constitutionality" of detaining Abad to get statements and of the taking of the blood sample.

"The defense intends that the search and seizure were unconstitutional - without probably cause, and the statement were seized in violations of Miranda (warnings)," Marootian wrote in the motion that was in the court file for Abad's case.

The case was dismissed on Jan. 19, 2012, almost exactly one year after the accident, according to court records.

Police say Linden Officer Pedro Abad drove his Audi A5 into the New Way Supermarket on St. George Avenue in Jan. 2011 and was charged with driving under the influence.

However, there is nothing in the records to indicated how Judge Carl Marshall ruled on Marootian's motion or why the charges were dismissed.

Marootian, who says on his website that he is regarded as a leading expert DWI Defense Lawyer in New Jersey, declined to comment on the case. Municipal prosecutor Steven Merman also declined to comment. Marshall did not return a call left at his law office.

Roselle police have said that officers were not required to have a search warrant to obtain a blood sample, but that the law has changed and officers must now obtain a warrant before taking a sample.

For years, police in New Jersey took blood samples from suspects based on probable cause. However, that changed after a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a case out of Missouri in which the court decided that a nonconsensual warrantless search violated a person's Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search.

Police in New Jersey now routinely obtain a search warrant to get a blood sample from a suspect.

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Tom Haydon may be reached at thaydon@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @Tom_HaydonSL. Find NJ.com on Facebook.