Halfmoon

A Saratoga County woman who was pilloried after a video that showed her car crashing into a trooper's cruiser went viral on the Internet may not have been talking on her cellphone as alleged by State Police.

Logan Wollaber, a 19-year-old college student from Greenfield Center, said she's been the target of online attacks from strangers across the country after the video was made public by multiple news outlets.

No one was injured, but the video gained widespread attention after police said Wollaber hit the trooper's car, which was pulled over on the Northway with its lights flashing, because she was using a cellphone and driving too fast.

Wollaber was ticketed for using a cellphone, unsafe lane change and imprudent speed. She said the trooper declined her offer to examine her phone for activity but told her a witness had seen Wollaber using the phone.

But phone records appear to support Wollaber's claim that her phone was in her purse on the seat next to her when a car cut in front of her while attempting to avoid the trooper.

"I was in the left lane and I was cut off because someone was trying to get over," Wollaber said. "I tried to avoid hitting them and I turned my wheel and hit my brakes and it caused me to spin."

A dashboard camera in a Halfmoon ambulance captured the startling footage of Wollaber's car skidding into the back of a trooper's car moments after the trooper had stopped to assist other motorists involved in a crash.

"I was not excessively speeding," Wollaber said. "I wasn't going that much faster than anybody else was on the Northway at that time."

The collision with the trooper's cruiser took place at 7 a.m. on March 30 as Wollaber was heading south on the Northway near the Twin Bridges. Traffic was light that Saturday and two other emergency vehicles had just pulled over, including an ambulance.

Wollaber, a student at Hudson Valley Community College, said she was on her way to work at a local hospital. But, she said, "It's just really been ridiculous. I've been getting (electronic) messages from random people ... telling me I'm just this and that. They stereotype me because I'm a 19-year-old girl and they automatically assume I had to be on my phone."

Itemized records provided by her father, James Wollaber, show the first call on his daughter's phone that morning was when she dialed her father's cellphone seconds after the crash. Logan Wollaber said she had to dig the phone out of her purse, which had been hurled onto the floor in the crash.

James Wollaber said the call from his daughter lasted seconds because the trooper ordered her to hang up.

"She called me as soon as she hit the car. ... Then she said: 'I got to go,' and then she hung up," James Wollaber said. "She texted me when she was standing outside the car and she said somebody cut her off."

The phone records do not indicate any other calls or texts on Logan Wollaber's phone in the hours leading up to the crash.

Logan Wollaber has never been ticketed, her father said. She was in a crash about eight months ago when the steering rods broke on a vehicle James Wollaber had bought for his daughter at a car auction, he said. Trooper Kandi K. Woods, who ticketed Wollaber, was unavailable for comment. Trooper Mark Cepiel, a spokesman for Troop G, said the information supporting the decision to ticket Wollaber for allegedly driving while using a cellphone was not available Friday.

"That would be something the trooper would keep in her own personal notes," Cepiel said. "Troopers investigate their own situations like that."

blyons@timesunion.com • 518-454-5547