The criminal charges appeared strangely out of sync with the circumstances that presented themselves to the Cobb County police of Atlanta, Georgia.
‘We are charging him with failure to maintain lanes, with jumping lights and… ah.. yes, and with first degree vehicular homicide.’
‘Hutcherson was so drunk,’ the officer went on, ‘that he had no idea what had happened. He seems genuinely remorseful.
A neighbour called us out this morning after seeing the headless body sitting up in the passenger seat of his truck. Hutcherson was asleep inside in his bed, fully-clothed and covered in blood.
Our detectives had to work out what had happened.’
Apparently with his friend Daniel Brohm, John Hutcherson had spent the entire day drinking. When they finally left the bar Brohm leaned out the passenger door being violently sick. The drunk driver veered across the road onto the verge where a telegraph pole was fastened to the ground by a steel hawser. The latter decapitated Brohm without Hutcherson noticing. He drove home another twelve miles before stumbling out and into his bed. Asked to explain, Corporal Pierce added,
‘We found the decapitated head twelve miles back at the side of the road and there were blood streaks on the hawser. It’s hard to believe that anyone could drive a further twelve miles without realizing his passenger had lost his head… literally.
Without witnesses we don’t know if any charges will stick. I mean, nobody saw him weaving through lanes or jumping lights. Could he have intended his friend’s death on that hawser? Who knows?’