Roswell police say they couldn’t charge an obviously impaired driver with DUI because officers had to use NARCAN to revive him.
Michael Willis told WSBTV’s Mike Petchenik he was driving home from work on June 9 on Highway 92 near Mountain Park Road when he saw a car driving erratically.
“I saw him start driving up on the sidewalk and he was driving on the wrong side of the road on a narrow, two-lane road,” Willis said. “He ran over a couple of road signs, mailboxes. I was really worried he was driving on the sidewalk.”
Willis said he and another driver called 911, then boxed in the man, who he said appeared to be laughing while his passenger appeared to be going in and out of consciousness.
“My first thought was he was impaired or having some type of emergency that he probably shouldn’t be driving,” said Willis. “He was starting to speed up. He would come up behind me, so I’d speed up a little bit, then he slowed back down. I would slow down just to keep him from speeding through a residential area,” Willis said.
Police told Petchenik the driver eventually pulled into the parking lot of Mountain Park Elementary when officers arrived.
“It became pretty apparent the driver was under the influence of some type of narcotics where they had to administer NARCAN to the driver to revive him,” said department spokeswoman, Lisa Holland.
Holland said both the driver and passenger appeared to be on some kind of drugs.
“One couldn’t drive for the other. They were both under the influence and unable to drive a vehicle at that time which is scary to these citizens,” she said.
Because of the NARCAN administered to the driver, Holland said police were unable to determine what drugs were in his system in order to charge him with DUI.
“They go up to the hospital they are administered other drugs…counteracting measures are put into their system,” she said.
Police did charge the unidentified driver with two counts of hit-and-run and he was issued a ticket.
“I think it’s upsetting that they can’t be charged just because they were endangering a lot of people,” said Willis.
“Had they hit that car head-on along Mountain Park Road it would have been really bad.”
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