Nearly two years after Columbus Blue Jackets forward Johnny Gaudreau and his brother Matthew were killed on a New Jersey roadside, the man accused of running them down is still sitting in a county jail cell with no trial date on the calendar.
Sean Higgins, 44, is scheduled to appear in Salem County Superior Court on July 20. He faces charges of reckless vehicular homicide and aggravated manslaughter in the Aug. 29, 2024, deaths of Johnny Gaudreau, 31, and Matthew Gaudreau, 29. The brothers were riding bicycles along the right shoulder of a road in Oldmans Township, New Jersey, the night before their sister’s wedding, when Higgins’ Jeep Grand Cherokee veered off the roadway and struck both of them.
Higgins did not stop. His vehicle traveled about a quarter mile before it became disabled, according to New Jersey State Police. He has remained in custody since his arrest that night.
The facts laid out in court records are the kind you read once and don’t forget. Higgins told police he had been drinking before and while driving. He tossed several beer cans into a field near where his Jeep came to rest — officers recovered them. His blood alcohol level tested at 0.087%, above New Jersey’s legal limit of 0.08%.
His defense team sees it differently. Higgins’ attorneys have argued the blood sample was not tested properly and that his actual blood alcohol content fell within the legal range. On May 11, Judge Michael Silvanio rejected a request to dismiss some or all charges based on those blood samples, ruling that a jury could hear evidence from both sides and make its own factual determination. The defense has indicated it will file a motion to suppress the blood evidence as its next step.
Attorneys for Higgins have also asked Silvanio to bar portions of the statements he gave police the night of the crash.
Court records and testimony from a prior hearing paint a picture of a driver who was not in control of his vehicle long before impact. Witnesses described Higgins driving aggressively — accelerating to close the gap behind the car in front of him, then dropping back, then surging forward again. He passed one of two vehicles ahead of him on the left. The second vehicle began shifting left to give the Gaudreau brothers room on the right shoulder. Higgins told police he read that move as someone trying to cut him off. He swerved back to the right, ran partially off the road, and hit both men.
You coach long enough, you see what impatience does on a field — somebody abandons their assignment, tries to make a play that isn’t there, and people get hurt. This wasn’t a football field. Two brothers pedaling to a wedding rehearsal, and a man who’d been drinking decided the car in front of him was moving too slow. The film doesn’t lie.
Johnny Gaudreau spent 11 seasons in the NHL, the last two with Columbus after signing a seven-year, $68.25 million contract in 2022. He was a seven-time All-Star who tallied 743 career points. Matthew Gaudreau, 29, played professionally in the ECHL and had been coaching hockey at Gloucester Catholic High School in New Jersey.
The Aug. 29 anniversary of their deaths is now less than two months away. Higgins’ July 20 appearance is not a trial date — it is the next procedural checkpoint in a case that has moved slowly through pretrial motions since last fall.
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