4:30 p.m.

• This has been a somewhat-big story in my neck of the woods. This just goes to show that if some drunk driver plows into you, and your car can still run after the collision, run over the sonofabitch and killer the fucker if you have the chance. Taking a wrench to the lush's head a few times will work, too, if your car is unable to drive.

As he drove along bustling Interstate 68 near Morgantown, W.Va., in his Ford pickup Sunday evening, the man with nine arrests, seven convictions and two pending cases since 1998 had no right to be there, authorities contend.

 

A 2002 license suspension in West Virginia should have kept him grounded for 10 years. A 2003 driver's license in Pennsylvania never should have been granted. He should not have fallen through the cracks, they argue.

 

Repeating history, he drank and he drove and he wrecked. It wasn't the first time, police said...

 

...Stone, 32, of Cheat Lake, W.Va., is charged with killing five people and injuring seven others in the crash on I-68 near the Pierpont Road interchange outside Morgantown. Authorities said the former North Versailles man, who maintains an address in Fayette County, was driving drunk when his pickup truck rear-ended a Ford Taurus and sent it across the highway into oncoming traffic, where it struck a Chevrolet TrailBlazer...

 

...At the time of the crash, Stone was free on $5,000 unsecured bond stemming from alcohol-related charges filed before District Justice Randy S. Abraham in Fayette County. He was awaiting a pretrial court conference later this month...

 

...Records show he was arrested in Pennsylvania or West Virginia for drunken driving or alcohol-related charges nine times, with seven convictions since 1998.

 

Nordstrom said Stone's most recent conviction, in West Virginia, was for driving with a revoked license related to a DUI charge. Although the conviction carried a mandatory penalty of one to three years in a state prison, Stone was approved for house arrest with electronic monitoring.

 

"Prisons everywhere are overcrowded. ... It causes a lot of people to end up on home confinement. He completed that and was out," Nordstrom said. "And, on the pending charges, he was free on bond."

 

Records show Stone used a mailing address in Pennsylvania to obtain a license here in 2003. His West Virginia license should have been revoked for 10 years in 2002, but remained valid because of an oversight. Officials in both states were unaware he had dual licenses.

3:30 p.m.

• So the better half was reading her church’s weekly newsletter-thing and said that they’re looking for some guest family (or whatever they’re called) for some South Korean exchange student. (Sorry, Vyce, this one’s 16.) After I got my “Don’t even think about it unless you don’t want to see our cats again” remark out of the way, I had to comment that it’s amazing for someone that young to travel half-way across the world and spend a year with people you don’t know. Shit, I’m lucky to leave the house during the weekend.

• This past week had a date titled 7-11 and Friday the 13th. Weird.