Cop Shop Blog

DUI suspect misses turn ‘coming home from the club,’ ends up in jail 60 miles away

It happens more than you might think. Someone who has, for example, had too much to drink at a bar or somewhere, hops in a car and drives home the wrong way.

Sometimes their detours take them miles off course, and when interwoven Atlanta-area interstates come into play their wrong turns may not be realized until they are dozen of miles down the road.

Consider the case of a McDonough woman who was spotted by a Monroe County sheriff’s deputy at the wheel of an SUV that was weaving along a road near Interstate 75 on the north side of Forsyth. The SUV reeked of alcohol and the woman, 48, said she’d recently consumed a wine cooler when the deputy pulled her over the night of Jan. 14.

The woman said she had just driven from her home 30 or so miles to the north in Henry County, the deputy’s incident report noted. “I asked (her) where she was going … and she advised me that she was traveling to Atlanta. … I informed (her) that she was traveling in the complete opposite direction of Atlanta.”

The woman attributed it to recent “medical issues.” She was jailed for DUI. A couple of weeks earlier, a southwest Atlanta man also found his way to Monroe County. It was about 3 a.m. on the night after Christmas when passersby spotted him pull over on I-75 near High Falls Road to, as a sheriff’s report put it, “urinate on the side of the highway.”

The car, a black Infiniti, was later seen swerving on the freeway approaching Forsyth. When the car was pulled over, the driver, 32, who lives near Fairburn on the outskirts of Atlanta near Interstate 85 more than 50 miles away, smelled of alcohol. He said he and a passenger were “coming home from the club in Atlanta.” The driver, charged with DUI, was taken to jail. The passenger, who was also said to be “not in a safe condition to operate the vehicle … called for a ride to come and pick him up.”

Dispatches: A man on Collins Ridge Drive near Bolingbroke called the cops in mid-December and, according to a sheriff’s write-up, reported that there were “five or six dogs chasing goats.” He said it was “the second time in two weeks that the goats have been running loose.” . . . On Dec. 26, a Monroe sheriff’s deputy was called to handle “a civil matter” involving a man accused of sending his son-in-law threatening text messages. The father-in-law, who according to an incident report was said to start drinking about 3 o’clock every afternoon, texted the son-in-law, saying he would beat the son-in-law up “because he is a piece of (expletive).”

Joe Kovac Jr.
The Telegraph
Joe Kovac Jr. writes about local news and features for The Telegraph, with an eye for human-interest stories. Joe is a Warner Robins native and graduate of Warner Robins High. He joined the Telegraph in 1991 after graduating from the University of Georgia. As a Pulliam Fellowship recipient in 1991, Joe worked for the Indianapolis News. His stories have appeared in the Washington Post, the Seattle Times and Atlanta Magazine. He has been a Livingston Award finalist and won numerous Georgia Press Association and Georgia Associated Press awards.
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