Atlanta Drunken Drivers Slam into Pharmacies, Cause Five-Car Pile-ups Then Flee
Atlanta, GA- Atlanta law enforcement always has to deal with drunken drivers but in one weekend there were a couple of unusual incidents, one of which caught national attention, that probably gave police some chuckles.
In the first incident, an Atlanta-area man, who wasn’t quite done drinking after he crashed into to a pharmacy, left his vehicle and went to a nearby bar to have a nightcap.
The incident took place late Friday, Oct. 18th on Cheshire Bridge Road when Rashad Williams, 38, of Lithonia lost control of his vehicle, jumped a curb, careened across a parking lot and slammed into a Walgreens Community pharmacy near the corner of Piedmont Ave., the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.
When police arrived on the scene, they found a Chrysler jutting out of the building with no driver inside. Ironically, the driver barely missed striking a DUI school next door to the pharmacy.
Police began to search for the missing driver and with the help of witnesses they located him at the Anchor Bar which was next door. Officers told the AJC that when they went into the bar “the driver was sitting at the bar drinking a beer.” “We then escorted the driver outside after he paid for his tab,” the police report stated.
Williams told officers that he was driving down Cheshire Bridge Road when he attempted to make a left hand turn and lost control of his vehicle.
The witness who called 911 told officers that he saw the suspect’s maroon Chrysler traveling at a high rate of speed before crashing into the Walgreens.
The Walgreens provides rare medications for patients who had transplants or suffer from cancer. They were operational the day after the accident and were able to serve patients, but had quite mess to clean up after.
Williams was arrested and charged for suspicion of driving under the influence.
Then the next day on the Buford connector, a WSB-TV camera crew saw a man slumped over the steering wheel of his truck and the video quickly went viral. He was passed out and drooling, unaware that dozens of cars were backing up behind him. The man was stopped in the right driving lane with the engine running, but he was dead to the world.
A Georgia Department of Transportation HERO unit arrived on the scene, tried to rouse the man and remove the keys from the ignition, which he was unable to do. The HERO officer managed to wake the man up, but the man quickly took off and nearly hit the HERO.
The drunken man didn’t go too far before he crashed into a couple of vehicles and set off a chain of minor collisions involving a total of five cars. The driver, who had not been identified, jumped out of his truck, ran up an embankment and then scaled a fence to get away from the scene.
Both these men made big mistakes, and though an Atlanta DUI attorney could help them with their defense strategy, it is never a good idea to flee the scene.
