A DeKalb County jury found Dexter Thrasher guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of driving under the influence of alcohol “DUI” to the extent that it was less safe to do so, OCGA § 40-6-391 a 1, and failure to maintain a lane, OCGA § § 40-6-48 and 40-6-1. Thrasher appeals from the judgment of conviction, contending that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress, in permitting the State to present certain evidence, and in charging the jury. He also challenges the sufficiency of the evidence. For the following reasons, we affirm his conviction for DUI and reverse his conviction for failure to maintain a lane. The evidence, viewed in favor of the jury’s verdict,1 shows the following. On June 15, 2006, a woman stopped her minivan at a stop sign at the intersection of Boring Road and Flat Shoals Parkway in DeKalb County. At the same time, Thrasher was driving his pick-up truck on Flat Shoals Parkway. According to the woman, Thrasher turned right onto Boring Road, he was driving “kind of fast” as he made the turn, and he “swung out a little bit too far,” hitting the driver’s side rear bumper of the woman’s minivan. The woman felt the collision, which cracked her van’s bumper and scratched its paint. Thrasher stopped his truck for a few seconds, then, before the woman could get out of her car, Thrasher “took off.”
The woman followed Thrasher, who threw a bag out of the window as he drove down the road. Then Thrasher pulled into the driveway of a nearby house and parked his truck behind the house. The woman parked her van on the street and called 911. An officer arrived at 1:45 p.m., briefly talked to the woman, and observed some minor damage to her van. The officer then talked to Thrasher, who admitted that he had had two glasses of wine earlier that day and that he had just gotten back from driving his truck to the store. Thrasher denied that he had hit anyone with his truck during his trip to the store. The officer looked at Thrasher’s truck, which had damage that was consistent with the woman’s allegations. The woman identified Thrasher’s truck as the one that hit her van, and, as she talked to Thrasher and the officer, she smelled the odor of alcohol coming from Thrasher.
