Overnight Accident on Oakview Road
Decatur Metro | August 11, 2010A family who witnessed the crash writes in…
Around 2:15 this am, someone hit (mangled and totaled, to be precise) a parked car on Oakview then slammed into a power pole on the median with enough force to split it in two pieces. The woman driver left the scene of the accident, but also left her car! She ran into the parking lot of the Spring Point apartments; as far as we know, she vanished. Just thought you might be interested. My husband was woken up by it, went outside and saw what happened. I saw the car and the power pole this morning and have no idea how it was physically/physic-ly possibly for her to hit both the car and the pole!
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I saw the aftermath this morning when I left to take the kiddies to school. I would never have guessed that only one car caused all that! I also can’t believe it didn’t wake me up since I’m less than a block from the whole thing. The power company has the southbound side of Oakview blocked off while they replace the power pole.
2:15 a.m., eh? And when do the bars close?
Ah the power of alcohol. One can do amazing feats of destruction and stagger away relatively unscathed.
I did see that she was booked at DeKalb jail later that morning.
Where’d you see that?
http://www.dekalbmugs.com
Yikes!
Which one is the perp?
Chadly, I am betting on the lady with the Mohawk. Look at the charges…
DUTY TO REPORT ACCIDENT RESULTING IN INJURY, DEATH, OR PROPE
DUTY UPON STRIKING FIXTURE.
DUTY UPON STRIKING UNATTENDED VEHICLE.
Whoa, Nellie. (I’ve always wanted to say that on here.)
Stick around a while chad, you’ll be saying it a lot.
Holy shiite! [edited]. Why on Earth is she SMILING? She must not remember what actually happened.
I saw her at U Joint on Sunday. OUT OF CONTROL. I was wondering what had happened on my way to work yesterday morning when I saw the car and the road being blocked off, makes total sense after witnessing her antics this weekend. hot mess.
Uh oh. Looks like someone else has some explaining to do…
Oops! U Joint folks! Not you! (Unless you saw her get behind the wheel.)
Wheel or no wheel. Public intoxication is also a crime, right? What exactly is the law regarding a bar’s responsibility in a situation like this?
Total anecdote. Not sure what their responsibility is, but I know when I worked in a club 15 years ago (in the city limits of Atlanta), I saw a couple of people leave who could barely stand get into their car. I tried to get them to stop and not drive. I offered to pay for their cab, but they were belligerent and would have nothing of it. Off they drove.
I was advised by management to not call the police because it would bring police attention to the club. Not that we were doing anything illegal, but just in general management didn’t want any kind of attention. I called the police anyway (with make/model/license plate). I have no clue if they bothered to find them. They weren’t regulars and I don’t ever remember seeing them again.
That mugshot link shows that her address is on Oakview Road! She could have walked home and saved herself a lot of trouble.
Well before everyone rushes to judgment, this lady’s address is listed ON Oakview Rd. If she’s a known local she could reasonably be expected to freaking WALK home. Let’s not start shaking fingers at the U Joint folks just yet…
I shook no fingers, I’m honestly curious. What’s the law? Cuba, you’re a barrister right?
Yep, and in response to your question, Georgia does in fact have a Dram Shop Act (see O.C.G.A. § 51-1-40, et seq.); the cases on point seem to suggest that it’s historically been an uphill battle to actually hold a shopkeeper liable under those laws, though. However, if the purported perp’s antics were as publicly obvious as eg10’s post above indicates, and there are enough witnesses to that fact (combined with BAC results that indicate a level of intoxication such that no reasonably observant bartender wouldn’t have known or suspected that she was sloshed), then U-Joint could have a problem. That is, IF the perp didn’t drink somewhere else after she left there.
I haven’t done criminal prosecution for over 11 years, so I’m not familiar with any recent DSA cases. Somebody who does DUI or PI or insurance defense would probably have more current info than I do.
not sure why a prosecutor would care about a civil statute. and dui attorneys don’t care about dram shop acts — their clients are facing als and criminal charges and are no more than a character in the play. this is PI territory and we all know that it takes way more self respect to keep your face off a billboard than to plaster it on.
regardless, the bar has a target on its back and even if they could get a cheap trial from a lawyer friend they are looking at $15-20,000 or a good $10k to win it on MSJ. that’s settlement territory unless the insurance company (if such exists) has a low tolerance for nuisance suits.
if i were a PI attorney i’d take the case and then suicide in the smallest interval of time possible. if i were the insurance company defending i’d bill at $400 an hour and do the same. $250 for associates. $125 for paralegals.
Drama, you’re right, it’s all about civil liability. As a PI attorney (sans billboard, phone book page or Marta bus ad, thank you very much), I’m familiar with the Dram Shop laws. First off, there’s always insurance, so it’s the insurance company paying a lawyer (usually one who gets his paycheck from the insurance company) to protect its own money. If the bar has let its insurance coverage lapse or there’s some other coverage issue, it’s probably not worth going after them unless the client really wants to own a bar.
The typical situation is one in which someone gets blotto at a bar and immediately hops in his car and kills or seriously injures someone else on the road. The victim or her family obviously has a case against the drunk driver for the limits of the driver’s auto liability limits (don’t even get me started on the state minimum requirement of $25k; it’s a sin that this hasn’t been raised to at least $500k by now).
The victim MAY also have a claim against the bar or restaurant, but she must show that the defendant was served alcohol while in a state of “noticeable intoxication” by someone who knew that the defendant would “soon be driving a motor vehicle”. This is where it gets fact intensive and tricky. The fact that so many bars and restaurants have video cameras all over helps if you can get those recording preserved immediately. Otherwise, you need to track down witnesses or get the server to personally admit their mistake. The knowledge of intent to drive is usually easier, but could be trickier in the case of a place like the U-Joint, where so many people walk to and from.
If in fact the smiling mohawk woman left U-Joint, drove to Memorial Drive and then had this wreck on the way home, U-Joint’s liability would probably hinge on whether the woman drove away FROM U-Joint, or whether she walked home first and then hopped in the car. Either way, she, and the public in general, are extremely lucky that nobody was hurt or killed.
As a patron of pubs as well as a personal injury attorney, I’m intrinsically torn on Dram Shop laws. The proximate cause (legally, ethically and morally) of any accident caused by a drunk driver is the drunk driver’s decision to get behind the wheel after drinking too much alcohol. But in a case where someone is just so obviously hammered and the folks at the bar or restaurant let them get behind the wheel, they have clearly enabled and facilitated a potential tragedy.
One of the real problems is the state requiring only $25K in liability insurance for automobile policies. In a case where someone is killed by a drunk driver with minimum limits, you may have to go after the bar’s insurance to get anywhere near the value of the case. This is also why everyone out there should make sure that they have enough uninsured/underinsured motorist (UM) coverage, which kicks in when you are hit by someone with limits too low to compensate you for the damages and injuries they caused. If you don’t have at least $500k, preferably a $1,000,000 in UM coverage, you are risking your life (or at least the value of it) every time you get in a car!
You’re right, drama, that the DSA is a civil statute– and I didn’t mean to imply that our office had any jurisdiction over those laws (that’s what I get for posting hastily). All the terms I used in talking about the DSA are couched in civil (not criminal terms), so I’m certainly cognizant of its genre, just not very adept at expressing it. The extent of my experience with it was in a few cases where our office got ORA requests after a DUI trial had concluded, presumably so that the requestor could try to get at least some additional information to either help bring or defend a DSA case filed by a party who’d been injured in some fashion by the DUI perp (it’s probably easier to get that information via an ORA request than through civil discovery). This is why I stated PI or DUI attorneys would have a better take on it than I. Personally, I’ve never done DUI, PI, or insurance defense because they just don’t appeal to me– but I have plenty of friends who do practice in those areas (and who share J-T’s ambivalence about the DSA). My main areas in pvt practice were municipal law, healthcare law, and general business litigation (non-compete disputes, tax, partnership & corporate agreement disputes, etc.); now they’re in the civil sector of the government.
I’m shaking a judgy finger! What if she’d left walking & walked straight into the path of a car? Then you’ve got a dead drunk & an innocent driver who’s shattered for life! We don’t know the details, but eg10 probably would’ve mentioned it if the U Joint folks had taken any action at all. Let it be a “close call/ lesson learned” for them & all alcohol serving establishments.
I hear the crash occurred on the way home from a gas station on memorial drive from a late night beer run. A beer run the left a house behind with chicken still cooking on the stove! Closing time for bars was not the cause. Nor was any other bar in oakhurat, so to insinuate liability on any of oakhurst’s establishments is irresponsible. We should all learn the facts before rushing to judgement on a blog. Question cudelibre… Why mention uj? She was not arrested on a DUI charge and was traveling towards uj before the crash.
OMG. You are right. My sincere apologies to the U Joint. eg10’s comment translated differently to my brain.
(Shaking judgy finger at me.)
To clarify: I sincerely apologize for treating as fact a blog mention of the U Joint. Hopefully, they adhere to high standards when serving customers & addressing customer situations. I do believe that anyone – friend, family, business employee, casual observer- has an obligation to do something if they’re aware that someone is impaired & could cause harm to others.
Sorry– I’m just seeing this (this is an older thread). I mentioned UJ because it was brought up in another poster’s account of seeing the purported driver there, and my response was directed at other questions along that vein. If you read my post, you’d see that I also included the caveat that UJ could– not WOULD, but could– have a problem only if the driver didn’t actually leave & drink elsewhere before the accident. Just because people mention the establishment where this person was supposedly quite publicly drink doesn’t mean they’re smearing the place unjustly. No one here was stating unequivocally that UJ is, or was, being irresponsible in this case. It’s a public bar, it knows people can (and do) get inebriated there, and that other people will likely witness this. I’m pretty sure UJ’s reputation isn’t going to be ruined, or even tarnished, just because people on a local blog mention that they saw someone drunk off their @ss there.
I am the lady with the Mohawk. A Mohawk which is the result of recent chemotherapy for ovarian cancer. I beleive the Mohawk looks better than the pompadour that was growing out of my head. I was involved in the accident and I was NOT charged with DUI. This WAS an accident and no one was hurt, other than myself. This was not the fault of any drinking establishment and my smile in the mug shot was due to all the extremely attractive correctional officers that greeted me at the Dekalb County Jail prior to taking me to Grady Hospital. I hit the car 1st and bounced off to then hit the telephone pole. If you have ever hit a telephone pole before, you can understand the panic and confusion that can follow such a shocking event. All I remember thinking is that I have to get home, which is where the police found me….walking home. By the way, I did walk home from the U Joint on Sunday night. I have comprehensive auto insurance and the owner of the car will be completely compensated. I apologize for any inconvenience this event has caused.
Dear Disturbed Residents of Oakhurst:
I am not typically a “blogger”, but feel it is a MUST to reply to this thread.
I am sure that we can all agree on one thing- that accidents are horrible. We are lucky with this one that no one was seriously hurt and inanimate objects, not people, were lost.
First, I would like to thank all responsible bloggers for educating me on Dram Shop Liability. Considering that she was not charged with DUI (see dekalbmugs.com) this was definitely of interest to read on this blog. I would also like to express gratitude to all dependable parties for schooling me in the art of being judgmental. In my thirty-something years of age, I have completely learned how to judge places, people and everything else that I ever needed to know- so, thank you for that.
It would be a beautiful thing to see this concerned group of DeKalb County citizens rallying at the local DeKalb police precinct (1816 Candler Road) to see what they can do to combat the teenagers wandering the streets with loaded guns and shut down the crack dens that are alive and well and going on less than 2 miles south of them. Believe it or not, these wonderful occurrences happening close-enough-but-far-enough-away, not only affect your safety, but your home values as well.
For those of you that don’t have the pleasure of knowing Ms. Mohawk as I do, I would like to tell you a little about her. She is one of the most loyal and kind gals that you would ever want to meet. I can also tell you that she would be devastated if she hurt a flea. And, she is by far one of the best people that I have met in my 11 plus years of living in this city. So, we are all very lucky that she is still here with us.
Megan
PS: I notice that some of you are attorneys. However, I am very curious to know what the rest of you all do for a living. Because, if you can spend as much time on this blog as I have seen, then I need to get a new job.
Whew! Sure glad I didn’t comment on this thread, as Megan TT would have come through the monitor and kicked my a$$.
Oh wait. I just commented.
Megan TT,
One reason I read this blog is that, for every snarky and judgemental comment, there are ten other comments that are informative, positive and often humorous (Gibbets usually has some real LOL gems). Anyway, my point is this blog is better managed than most, and the good that it does far outweighs the negatives. I understand where you’re coming from, and we’ve all been offended by someone’s comments at some point in time, but try to look past the chaff and see the intelligence, passion and love for the city that DM posters have.
DTR:
Point well received. Please understand, that when I see all these nasty references about a friend- whom none of the bloggers know or know anything about, it definitely causes a reaction-hence my letter. I don’t take any of it back, but am learning to laugh at the posts and the minds behind them. But once again, the most important thing is that Ms. Mohawk, the only one involved in the accident, is OK.
I agree with you about DM metro- good blog- will check it out once in awhile- trying not to get too addicted to many cyber things- Facebook is about all I can handle right now- Haha.
Haven’t really fully delved deep into this blog, but do wish that my south of Glenwood, unincorporated Decatur neighborhood, Toney Valley was on more of it. Guess I could fix that- but have got to find about 3 more hours in the day to tackle that one- just don’t have the time.
And for the record- I’m a lover, not a fighter- so no a$$-kickings through the monitor by Megan TT.
Megan TT-
Everybody needs a friend like you when the going gets tough. Once you get past the blazing mad stage, I hope you’ll realize that maybe we’ve kinda done your friend some good. From her comment, she seems to understand the concerns. I’m very glad that she wasn’t seriously hurt.
Decatur Metro is an outstanding blog. Its true beauty is that the commenters are honest in sharing their thoughts & ideas. A good many of us are also quick to ‘fess up when we get something wrong. DM mostly focuses on things that affect folks within the city limits, but if you want to tackle your area’s concerns, then bring it here. Folks will likely offer up some good ideas that could help.
Exactly which posts do you find to be so recklessly judgmental? (Pun intended.)
Why is the crime that occurs south of Memorial relevant to this discussion? Does your mention of those crimes somehow legitimize this crime? I really don’t understand the reference.
Ms. Mohawk if any of my posts upset you, I sincerely apologize. I applaud your punk rock response to chemo. I hope you kick cancer’s a$$. Honestly, I do. If I ever get saddled with cancer, I’ll follow your lead and get a mohawk too.
Whether drinking was involved or not, this incident should serve as a reminder to us all to slow the frick down. Behind those light poles are good people getting a good night’s rest.
Writerchad- I sure hope you’re looking for your “bad boy” avatar. This new one’s freaking me out!
:0)
I AM kicking cancer’s ass. Thanks for the positive sentiment. I’m not offended by anyone other than eg10. My guess is that she was probably jealous of my fun (on my birthday weekend) or possibly upset that I didn’t try to hit on her. Either way, I’m sure she is miserable. And “crime”? What crime occurred? It was an ACCIDENT! An accident that I attempted to walk home from. Like I said earlier, I was in a state of shock after hitting the telephone pole. I have lived in my house (that I own, not rent) for13 years. I have probably lived in the neighborhood longer than most of the people that commented on this article. Everyone knows that Decatur PD patrols Oakhurst heavily and would have cited me with DUI if they thought alcohol was involved. I do understand everyone’s concern. I went to the owners of the car to personally give them my insurance information an apologize for the inconvenience. Chad is correct, people (including me) should drive with caution in our neighborhood and NOT mess with the radio or talk on cellphones AND concentrate on the road. THAT is the lesson I learned. A costly lesson at that. I also learned to stay the HELL AWAY from the U Joint. We can all thank eg10 for that. Like Megan TT said, I really am a nice person in spite of my intimidating appearance. I’ve been an RN for 17 years and I tend to care about others (unfortunately) more than myself. I walk in the neighborhood regularly. I welcome anyone and everyone to take the time to get to know me. Knowing neighbors is the best defense against crime in our area. Thank you, Terri Woods