Crash driver admits to using meth, scuffles with officers

A driver who admitted to having used meth in the wake of a crash early Tuesday morning reportedly scuffled with police officers, racking up additional charges against him.

Shortly after 4:00 a.m., officers with the Lawrenceburg Police Department were dispatched to a wreck with injuries at the Garner Lane/South Locust Avenue intersection. They were informed that one of the drivers had fled on foot, got into an unknown vehicle, and left the scene. A check of the license plate indicated that the abandoned 2003 Saturn ION belonged to twenty-one year old Jake Robert Shults of Briarwood Drive in Lawrenceburg.

The driver of a 1996 Oldsmobile involved in the crash sustained injury to his back and shoulder. He was transported to the emergency room at Southern Tennessee Regional Health Systems with injuries that were not considered to be serious.

Soon afterward, officers were notified by Central Dispatch that Shults had been located at the City Administration Building on West Gaines Street. An officer retrieved him and transported him back to the scene where some of the crash victims were able to identify him as the second driver.

While they were still at the crash site, reports show that Shults stepped backward and grabbed the officer’s taser and tried to remove it. He became involved in a scuffle with the officer during which he reportedly made a second attempt to take the taser. Once he was placed inside of a police car he told the officer “he was trying to get my service weapon and use it and didn’t realize it was my taser he was grabbing.”

Once Shults was transported to the Lawrence County Detention Center for booking he allegedly admitted to officers that he had used methamphetamine within the previous twenty-four hour period. He was booked under charges that include failure to exhibit due care, leaving the scene of an accident, aggravated assault and resisting arrest. Bond was set at $27,000.

Shults is scheduled to answer the charges in General Sessions Court on March 3, 2017.