A report of a hit-and-run accident led to a charge of driving under the influence for a Bristol man Wednesday afternoon.
Bryan Edwin Jones, 48, 1030 Broad St., Apt. 3, Bristol, Tenn., was arrested by Elizabethton Police Department Capt. Jason Shaw and charged with driving under the influence after police said he backed into another vehicle at an Elizabethton apartment complex and left the scene.
Michael Nave, of Elizabethton, called 911 and said his van had been struck by a gold pickup truck that he had noticed driving erratically before the accident.
According to the police report, Nave told officers he had been driving through Lynnwood Apartments behind a truck that had been swerving across the road. While driving through the complex, the truck rolled backward and hit the front of Nave’s van.
Nave said he attempted to speak to the driver but the man left the scene and went to the parking lot of the A building in the complex. Nave did not wish to file an accident report because the van was not damaged, but said he was concerned because the driver of the truck appeared to be drunk.
Officers located the truck in the building A parking lot, with a driver still in the seat who appeared to be “passed out or sleeping.” The driver, identified as Jones, told EPD officers that he had just driven to the parking lot to take a woman home.
Shaw wrote in the report that Jones appeared “extremely intoxicated” with the smell of alcohol around him, unsteady on his feet and with glassy, bloodshot eyes. Jones was given a series of field sobriety tests, and was reported to have failed them.
Officers located the woman who Jones said he had driven home, who confirmed that he had.
Jones was arrested and taken to the hospital for a blood test, and then transported to the Carter County jail. He is scheduled to be in General Sessions Court on Aug. 4 at 9 a.m.