North Fulton County

Police arrest driver caught ‘drifting’ behind hamburger restaurant

By Mike Petchenik, WSB-TV
By Mike Petchenik, WSB-TV

ALPHARETTA, Ga. — Alpharetta police say a man’s attempt to recreate scenes from “The Fast and the Furious” put a lot of people in danger.

Police told Channel 2’s Mike Petchenik an officer patrolling Haynes Bridge Road in Alpharetta Jan. 31 heard a loud engine and people cheering behind a hamburger restaurant in an office complex parking lot.

“He pulled forward to investigate it further and saw a black Infinity passenger car accelerating quickly in the parking lot,” said Sgt. Howard Miller, with the Alpharetta Department of Public Safety. “There was smoke and apparently he witnessed the car doing doughnuts.”

Howard said the “drifting” exhibition happened within inches of several dozen people watching it, many with their cellphones recording.

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“You have a super car, accelerating at a high rate of speed,” Miller said. “He’s trying to control it with his brakes and doing doughnuts, but it could lose control at any minute and potentially run somebody over and potentially somebody gets hurt or killed.”

Police arrested the driver, Johnny McDonald Jr., 22, on charges of reckless driving and laying drag.

“We’ve been seeing a lot of high speeds in Alpharetta and we’ve been arresting a lot of people in Alpharetta,” said Miller. “Hopefully our message is getting out that we’re not going to tolerate it in Alpharetta.”

Driver Kiana Jones told Petchenik said she’s heard of similar exhibitions across Atlanta.

“I think kids don’t really know and understand how unsafe things are,” she said, adding that she didn’t believe the show was worthy of someone getting arrested.

Jeff Adams, who lives nearby, told Petchenik he doesn’t approve of what police say McDonald did.

“I think it’s maybe the example from home, from school,” he said. “A lot of it, too, is the social media, the pressure from their peers.”

© 2020 Cox Media Group

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