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A University of Georgia grad faces a drunken-driving charge after she lost control of a sport utility vehicle Sunday night near Five Points and crashed it into two parked cars and a utility pole, Athens-Clarke police said.

Her 2005 Chevrolet Tahoe hit the car, dove over a wall, hit the power pole and burst into flames, police said.

No one was injured in the 10 p.m. crash, but 435 customers lost electricity for four hours.

The driver, 22-year-old Stacy Paige Cason of Thomson, was charged with DUI, failure to obey a stop sign and improper driving, according to police.

Cason, who had a local address on North Avenue, graduated in May from UGA’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, a school spokeswoman said.

She was driving south on South Church Street and ran a stop sign at Hall Street, veered right and hit an unoccupied Jeep and a passenger car in a parking lot near the corner of Church and Springdale streets, police said.

The Tahoe continued straight where Church Street ends at Springdale, and after it hopped the curb, it drove over a wall and smashed head-on into a utility pole, police said.

The Tahoe came to a stop near East Cloverhurst Avenue, and Cason and her passenger got out of the burning SUV before emergency personnel arrived, police said.

Although an officer didn’t note it in a police report, a witness said the two cars the Tahoe hit were shoved into a porch, knocking down support posts.

The crash sounded like “a Dempsey Dumpster that had been dropped out of an airplane,” another witness said.

It was 2 a.m. or later until electric service was restored to customers in the Midtown neighborhood, more commonly known as the Bloomfield Historic District, said Jimmy Jones of Georgia Power Co.

The passenger told officers she and Cason had been at the Last Resort Grill on West Clayton Street, where they each had three glasses of wine.

Officers who administered a breath test to Cason said it showed she had twice the legal limit of alcohol in her system, police said.
Originally published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Tuesday, June 09, 2009