This story has been updated. 

Doraville, GA — Andy Yeoman, a former Doraville city council member who is also a candidate for the DeKalb County Commission, was involved in a car crash that severely injured a young woman. 

He is accused of driving under the influence and was arrested on a DUI charge afterward, but he wasn’t taken to jail. 

Officers at the scene said the driver of the vehicle Yeoman hit caused the crash, which occurred on March 23. Records show the driver, a 25-year-old woman, was cited for impeding traffic flow following the crash. She was transported to Grady Hospital. She has since been transferred to a different hospital in Alabama, her father said, adding that his daughter had a concussion and broken back.

Doraville Police arrested Yeoman after the crash, but records show he was given a ride home instead of a ride to the county jail. The Doraville Police Department cited and released him. According to the arrest record, Yeoman was complaining about stomach pain at the time. He refused medical treatment. 

The DeKalb Jail only takes detainees once they have been medically cleared. That means there’s no record of Yeoman’s arrest in county jail logs and no booking photo. Decaturish first learned of the arrest after receiving a tip.

Decaturish contacted Yeoman for comment. He acknowledged the crash and emphasized that he was not at fault. He said he wasn’t aware of any injuries to the other driver at the scene.

“The whole thing is really unfortunate, and I guess we’ll just have to see what happens,” Yeoman said.

The crash occurred at Peachtree Industrial Boulevard at I-285 around 6:22 a.m. on March 23. 

According to the incident report, Yeoman denied having had any alcohol since 10:30 p.m. the previous evening. Still, the Doraville Police officer stated in the report that he could smell alcohol on Yeoman’s breath. A breath test given at the scene revealed that Yeoman’s blood alcohol level was 0.112. The legal limit in Georgia is 0.08.

Yeoman told the officer he was going 35 miles per hour when his SUV struck the other SUV. However, the officer observed that Yeoman’s SUV pushed the other SUV two lanes over, causing broken glass in the road. 

The officer challenged Yeoman’s claim that he was going 35 miles per hour, noting the extent of the damage. According to the report, Yeoman said he didn’t know how fast he was going.

Yeoman told the officer that the other vehicle was parked on the road with its lights off, and the other driver was asleep in the car, the report says.

The officer’s report says that the other driver appeared confused, had a cut above her right eye and swelling on the side of her face, and was unable to describe what happened. She was transported to Grady.

The officer at the scene concluded the woman was asleep in her SUV, which she had turned off and parked in a lane of Peachtree Industrial Boulevard. The officer cited her for “impeding the flow of traffic.”

The young woman’s family isn’t sure what happened, but her father was skeptical of the claim she was sleeping when the crash occurred. According to her father, she doesn’t remember what happened because of the concussion. She was still in the hospital as of March 28. 

Yeoman was not the only person recently who was arrested for driving while under the influence of alcohol but not officially “booked.” 

A Lakeside High School student identified as the driver in a fatal crash that occurred on March 4 was also arrested but not booked into jail. She was taken to Grady and then released to her parents.

At a DeKalb County Chiefs’ Association meeting on March 13, Sheriff Melody Maddox announced that people who are arrested are not detainees until they are booked in the county jail and that if someone arrested is injured, they must be medically cleared before the jail will accept them. 

The sheriff’s policy can leave the public in the dark.

Jail bookings are the primary way for the public to know who is being arrested and for what. By extension, they serve as a way for the public to monitor the activities of police agencies. Decaturish would not have known about Yeoman’s arrest if we had not received a tip and filed a records request with Doraville Police. 

Yeoman was first elected to the Doraville City Council in 2019 and reelected in 2023. He resigned to run for the county commission. He faces incumbent District 1 DeKalb County Commissioner Robert Patrick in the May 21 Democratic Primary. Patrick declined to comment about his opponent’s arrest. 

Editor and Publisher Dan Whisenhunt contributed reporting to this story.

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