Atlanta rapper T-Pain and his family were on their way home from the airport early Monday morning when an alleged drunken driver hit their truck and took off, according to a Roswell police report.
The artist said on social media that he was just a mile from his Roswell house when a Chevrolet SUV struck them. The crash happened at the intersection of West Crossville and King roads around 1 a.m., the police report stated.
The vehicle “probably looks like they hit something super hard and missing the grill,” T-Pain, whose given name is Faheem Najm, wrote in a comment on Instagram. That was before police tracked down the suspect’s vehicle, which they said had been heavily damaged in the collision.
“Times is rough these days,” the Grammy Award winner chuckled in a video posted from the crash scene. “But whoever just (expletive) ran into the back of my (expletive) truck, and whoever just hit me, my wife, my road manager, my driver. Whoever just did that (expletive) and drove off? ... Life’s about to get so much worse.”
WARNING: The following video contains explicit language.
T-Pain’s driver was the only one who needed medical treatment. He was taken to Wellstar North Fulton Medical Center after experiencing back pain and difficulty breathing, the police report states.
A spokesperson for T-Pain did not return a request for comment, but the musician seemed to be handling the setback with a sense of humor.
“People that are saying my neck and back gonna hurt tomorrow are really underestimating how much my neck and back was already hurting from just being old,” the 39-year-old wrote in a comment Monday.
Police were able to track down the suspect’s vehicle quickly thanks to license plate reader cameras and eyewitnesses who followed the driver, officials noted in the incident report. The SUV had been abandoned about two miles away near the intersection of Brook Valley Drive and Oak Knoll Way in the Michael’s Pond neighborhood.
The vehicle had heavy front-end damage, and its airbags had deployed, the responding officer noted. Police said the smell of alcohol was emanating from it, too. Inside were 12 bottles of Corona Extra, one of which was empty, authorities noted. Several receipts were also found, and one of them listed an address in Woodstock, according to police.
Police then asked Cherokee County deputies to go to the address and check for anyone with a name matching the one they found on a passport located in the abandoned SUV.
They found the suspect at that address, along with the SUV’s keys in his pocket, officials said. The man smelled of alcohol and had urinated on himself, the police report states. He agreed to speak with police and admitted to having multiple beers, and a breathalyzer test administered at the Fulton County jail annex in Alpharetta showed a reading of 0.15, according to the report. The legal limit in Georgia is 0.08.
The man was then taken to North Fulton hospital before being booked into the jail on charges of driving under the influence and hit-and-run.
“Again, I know things is rough out here, but I tell you what. (Expletive) is going too great for me to not make me want revenge right now,” T-Pain said on Instagram. “‘Cause you drove the (expletive) off. And boy, that was the worst part! It wasn’t even the wreck!”
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