Santa Barbara – As if utility costs weren’t already high enough, Southern California Edison will no doubt be increasing all of our rates if people keep crashing into their equipment.
Perhaps believing that because he was driving a late-model Volvo sedan complete with airbags and one of the highest safety ratings on the road, Charles McKenna, 27, apparently didn’t bother to negotiate a reasonably accurate path of travel in the early evening of March 15. It was a Sunday at approximately 5:45 p.m., according to Santa Barbara Police Department spokesman Sgt. Eric Berecher, and traffic was very light with the sun still shining down the one-way downtown street.
In spite of those clear advantages to the safe operation of a vehicle, McKenna nevertheless managed to drive his Volvo over a curb and directly into a sturdy, 4-foot-tall Edison utility box anchored on the sidewalk. As solid as that unit was—virtually an immoveable object—it was no match for McKenna’s hurtling vehicle constructed of formidable Swedish steel, and was destroyed. But the utility box didn’t give itself up without a fight, bringing the Volvo to a sudden stop.
Apparently undaunted by any of this, McKenna alighted from the vehicle and blithely walked away. Beecher described this behavior to the media succinctly with “he blacked out, then woke up and walked away.”
It didn’t take responding SBPD patrol officers to locate McKenna—now a pedestrian—strolling down the same street. Upon contact with him, suspicions of alcohol consumption on his part immediately surfaced, and he was taken into custody and transported to Santa Barbara County Jail on charges of DUI hit-and-run.
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