Photo by ep_jhu.

$22,000: that’s how much an allegedly drunken sex romp inside a rapidly moving vehicle is going to cost 22-year-old Salem Trad.

The money will be given to Abdu Omar, who suffered injuries when his minivan taxi was struck from behind by Trad’s vehicle in May 2010. The State of Nova, who has been all over this story like white on rice, has the play-by-play:

A witness who came upon the scene said he pulled Salem T. Trad, 22, of Woodbridge, from behind the wheel of the car, and that a young woman was lying dazed between the front seats. When a state trooper arrived, he testified that Trad claimed that the woman had been driving. The woman denied it.

Then Trad told the trooper that he didn’t know who was driving. Finally, Trad said he couldn’t have been driving because he was having sex in the back seat with the woman, Trooper Corey Snyder testified. Trad confidently told that story again Monday during the two-day trial in Fairfax County Circuit Court, saying the sex had concluded and that he was asleep at the time of the collision. The woman denied any sexual activity with Trad.

Trad suggested that perhaps his longtime friend, Yenenah al-Damari, was driving, since the three of them had been drinking earlier at a Maryland strip club. Al-Damari said he’d been dropped off before the accident, but Trad’s claims forced Omar’s lawyer to name al-Damari as a defendant. Neither the state trooper nor the witnesses ever saw or heard of al-Damari at the scene.

You’d think that being forced to pay a five-figure sum, convicted of drunken driving, and having the woman you said you were having sex with deny it in court would get a guy down. But not Trad!

“Now that’s its over I’m just having fun,” he tweeted.