A 70-year-old Stone Mountain man accused of ramming more than a dozen vehicles during a drunken driving rampage in January was indicted Wednesday on a litany of charges, including felony murder.
Michael Owen Snider faces a total of 29 counts in Gwinnett County, including criminal damage to property, homicide by vehicle, serious injury by vehicle, driving under the influence of alcohol, reckless driving and failure to stop at the scene of an accident. His defense attorney, Christine Koehler, declined to comment Thursday about the indictment.
Cpl. Ed Ritter, a Gwinnett County Police Department spokesman, said Snider had a 0.184 blood-alcohol level, more than twice the legal limit of 0.08, when authorities allege that he caused four wrecks in DeKalb County and 11 in Gwinnett on Jan. 23.
Snider stopped only when his 2006 F-250 Super Duty pickup truck crashed into Johnboy’s Home Cooking restaurant in unincorporated Snellville. Witnesses said he appeared to be purposely aiming at and ramming other cars as if he were in a bumper car and not a 7,500-pound truck.
Killed in one of the crashes was a 73-year-old native of Ethiopia, Mintiwab Woldyohannes of Loganville. (Initial police news releases spelled her last name differently, as Woldeyhans.) Her daughter, 51-year-old Yeshihareg Abebe, also suffered a closed-head injury and broken ribs.
“We believe that we can show that the last collision was intentional,” Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter said of the crash that killed Woldyohannes.
Snider’s son, Michael Snider Jr., told a police investigator that his father had probably just left a bar in DeKalb County. He also stated that the establishment had been repeatedly warned about overserving his father, according to a police report.
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