Drunk Man Attempts To Cover Up His DUI Crash By Covering Road In Water, Blaming Wreck On Ice That Formed

CBS

Which is, when you think about it, damn near the dumbest thing you’ve ever heard. It’s still illegal to crash your car on icy roads when you’ve been drinking. The weather conditions don’t give you a get out of jail free card.

“Sorry officer, I was sober enough to drive when it was nice out. It’s not my fault it rained and then got cold and I had six more beers.”

But that’s what happened in Sparta, New Jersey, where Brian Byers allegedly ran a stop sign and crashed his car into a guard rail. Then he fled the scene.

Some time after that, he got the idea to return to the crash site and pour a bunch of water on the road in hopes that it would freeze and he could blame the wreck on the ice.

A cop spotted him doing so, and he and the friend he brought with him were arrested. From CBS:

[Alexander] Zambenedetti later drove Byers back to the scene in his car where Byers then allegedly poured water all over the intersection, creating dangerous black ice, police said.

An officer patrolling in the area spotted Byers walking in the middle of Sawmill Road and found Zambenedetti sitting in his car with two, five gallon plastic buckets visible in the back seat with some water still inside, police said.

The police said it was a pretty pathetic attempt at covering up a crime. From Daily Intelligencer:

“You could actually see the skid marks underneath the water they had just put there, so we knew that they had dumped this water over the top of where he lost control of the vehicle rather than the vehicle losing control on the ice itself,” said Sergeant Dennis Proctor.

Now, in addition to DUI charges, Byers is facing an additional count of creating a dangerous road condition.

Don’t drink and drive. Especially in bad weather.