Scrub those wicked little thoughts from your brain ? the driver who ran into the Winfield Courier building Saturday wasn’t trying to snuff out publisher Dave Seaton.
"It was nothing intentional toward the Courier or Mr. Seaton," Winfield Police Lt. Det. Frank Owens said Monday. "Just an accident."
Shirley Tran Do, 17, Davenport, Iowa, was northbound on Millington and attempting to make a turn east onto Ninth when the accident occurred. Her father Sinh Tran, 43, Winfield, was alongside her in the 1993 Nissan Maxima.
There was also a third passenger in the vehicle.
Owens said Mr. Tran was teaching his daughter how to drive a manual transmission vehicle when she lost control of the vehicle and struck the Courier building, 201 E. Ninth.
The pair fled the scene mostly due to "some confusion and fear" over the accident that had just occurred, Owens said. They were found a short time later.
The collision damaged the window and wall area of Seaton’s office on the front east side of the building.
Tran Do was cited for violation of a driver’s license restriction and leaving the scene of a non-injury accident. Mr. Tran was cited for driving on a suspended license. No one was in the Courier building at the time, according to a report on the newspaper’s Web site.
Owens said the amount of damage done would qualify for felony charges in the case but added that charges were unlikely to be that severe since the crash was an accident.
