Drunk driver crashes electric vehicle into restaurant, flees — found asleep at home

A suspect in their 40s who allegedly drove drunk, crashed an electric vehicle through the glass front of a ground-floor restaurant in a commercial building and then fled the scene has been taken into custody.

The Hanam Police Station in Gyeonggi Province said Thursday it had booked the suspect, identified only as A, without detention on charges of violating the Road Traffic Act — specifically drunk driving and failure to take necessary measures after an accident.

A is accused of ramming an electric vehicle into a restaurant in Deokpung-dong, Hanam, at around 5:17 a.m. Thursday and leaving without taking any action.

The vehicle smashed through the restaurant's glass window and pushed into the interior, damaging fixtures and fittings inside. No one was injured, as the crash occurred before the restaurant had opened for the day.

No passengers were in the vehicle at the time, police said.

Officers who responded to a report of a car crashing into a commercial building found A's wallet and identification inside the abandoned vehicle.

Using those documents to identify the driver, police went to A's home and found the suspect asleep there at around 6:17 a.m. — about an hour after the crash.

A had sustained minor bruises in the collision and reportedly admitted on the spot to both drunk driving and causing the accident. A's blood alcohol concentration at the time of apprehension was at or above the license-revocation threshold of 0.08 percent.

Because time had elapsed between when A allegedly drank and when the crash occurred, police plan to apply the Widmark formula using CCTV footage from the drinking venue to calculate A's precise blood alcohol level at the time of driving. Investigators also plan to look into the full circumstances of the drinking and the route A took before the crash.