The roommate of the tour bus driver accused of being DUI when the vehicle flipped on I-20 en route to the Masters has come to his defense.
“Well, No. 1, he was not DUI,” the man, who was not identified, told Channel 2 Action News through the door of his DeKalb County apartment Friday.
“I watched him cook breakfast before he left.”
However, Steven Hoppenbrouwer, 61, is also facing seven counts of serious injury by vehicle from Thursday’s crash, Columbia County jail records show.
The bus, owned by the Jet Executive premium limousine service, was carrying 18 passengers when it ran off the side of the road and overcorrected into a median at mile marker No. 186, according to the Georgia State Patrol.
Hoppenbrouwer remains in jail on a $20,000 bond, and most of the passengers have been released from Augusta hospitals.
But one passenger remained in critical condition Friday with unstable vital signs, Augusta University Medical Center spokesman Chris Curry told the Augusta Chronicle. Of the 10 passengers who received care at that facility, five remained hospitalized Friday. Another patient was in serious condition and three were in fair condition, Curry said.
One of the passengers threw out a note of optimism about the incident.
“But there were no fatalities,” Kip Plowman said on a video released by Doctors Hospital. “You gotta look at the positive side of this.”
He said Hoppenbrouwer almost drove off the road two other times before the crash.
“We careened off the side of the road,” he said. “We went around, spun around 1½ times ... and we probably skidded for a good hundred yards.”
The limousine service declined comment to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Thursday and again to Channel 2 on Friday. It has been inspected twice in the past two years and has not had any violations reported or reportable crashes in that time period, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
The company offers a variety of limousine sizes, from executive sedans to custom limousine buses, according to its website. State business records show the company was formed in 2006.
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