During a search of the hotel room, troopers reported locating an empty wine bottle and an empty package of 10 sleeping pills.
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James Halsell Jr, 59, was arrested after the deadly crash on Monday in Alabama.
Investigators said they observed evidence indicating that Halsell was driving at a high rate of speed when he collided with the victim’s Ford Fiesta.
Niomi Deona James, 11, and Jayla Latrice Parler, 13, died after the 2015 Ford Fiesta they were riding in was hit by a 2015 Chrysler 300 driven by Halsell, King said in a statement, adding that neither of the girls was wearing a seat belt.
According to Wednesday’s court filing, Halsell told one of the first troopers on the scene that he didn’t remember the crash. Pernell Deon James, the injured driver, was the father of both girls, according to AL.com. He said he had checked in to the motel room about midnight.
A retired NASA astronaut has been charged with murder following an auto collision in Alabama that resulted in the death of two girls. The description doesn’t say what happened next, but Halsell was still on the scene when officers arrived. He was released from jail on $150,000 bond.
An online biography by NASA said Halsell’s career with the space agency included five shuttle flights starting in 1994.
Halsell also served as the NASA manager for space shuttle launch integration atKennedy Space Center in Florida before leading NASA’s return-to-flight planning team for the space shuttle after Columbia disintegrated during re-entry in 2003.
Selected as an astronaut in 1990, Halsell spent more than 1,250 hours in space.
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Dennis Stripling, the mayor of Brent where the girls are from, told NBC News that the event was “tragic” and that the family was “like 20 minutes from home when this accident happened”. He piloted the shuttle Atlantis on its STS-74 flight in 1995, then commanded three shuttle missions: the STS-83 and STS-94 flights of Columbia in 1997 and the STS-101 mission of Atlantis in 2000. He left NASA in 2006 to take a job with ATK Launch Systems in Utah.
