The Accidental Journalist (an occasional series chronicling how predictable, preventable crashes are turned into accidents)
C’mon, you guys make this way too easy.
BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) – A man was booked into the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on a DWI charge and numerous traffic violations after he slammed into a Baton Rouge police car early Friday morning.
Baton Rouge police arrested Leper Lewis, 49, of Baton Rouge in the crash. It happened around 1:30 a.m. on Evangeline Street near I-110.
Lewis was charged with second offense DWI, reckless operation, failure to maintain control, driving on the wrong side of the road, expired driver’s license and no insurance.
According to police, he hit the police car after coming around a curve in the wrong lane on Evangeline. The collision was almost head-on and the impact spun the police unit around and off the road.
The 31-year-old corporal suffered only minor injuries and was okay. His police dog was also fine. However, the corporal’s police-issued 2008 Dodge Charger was heavily damaged and had to be towed from the scene.
It received some damage to the front of it and along the side. The entire length of the passenger side of the police car was damaged.
The other vehicle was damaged to the point where it had to be towed as well. Its damage was primarily to the front of the car.
The officer was patrolling in the 2500 block of Evangeline when the crash occurred. The street was temporarily closed to traffic while police investigated the accident.
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 at 8:43 am and is filed under The Accidental Journalist. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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September 22nd, 2009 at 9:02 am
At least the word “accident” doesn’t come until the very end of the story. Earlier, it’s a “crash” and a “collision,” and the driver–not the car–is the agent in the first paragraph.
September 22nd, 2009 at 10:53 am
This is progress: driver as agent, active voice, “crash”, “collision”. Except for the final reference to “accident” this could be a model for other reports.
September 22nd, 2009 at 2:08 pm
About 25 years ago I was watching some kind of TV show which was following some Montreal police officers as they did road side stops on drunk drivers. The camera man was off in the ditch a bit on a four lane divided highway filming a road side sobriety test Traffic was very light. The police car red and blue lights were on.
Suddenly the cameraman swung the camera around and we watched as a vehicle crashed into the back of the police cruiser. And yes this driver was quite drunk.