Suspected drunken driver stopped in citizen’s arrest

A man who was showing his Venezuelan family the sights of Houston came on a driver in a Mustang who was swerving in and out of lanes and possibly under the influence.

“We saw him coming with his car crashed and driving like crazy,” Alejandro Fernandez Favreau wrote in a Facebook post. “So we turned around and followed him.”

The guy stopped at a restaurant in the River Oaks area, then left and pulled into a nearby Central Market parking lot teeming with cars and pedestrians, according to Fernandez.

“We had to act quick to try to stop the guy before something bad happened,” he wrote in his post.

He got out of his car and hurried over to the driver’s side and pulled the driver out of his Mustang and detained him until police arrived.

His brother-in-law captured the episode on video and posted it on YouTube, which led to acclaim on the internet:

But Fernandez said in his post that many have criticized his action, saying he shouldn’t have gotten involved and could have been run over.

“At that point, I only thought of doing something before someone got hurt,” he wrote.

He was also apparently motivated by a pair of tragic events in his past.

“I thought of two really good friends of mine that are now dead,” he said, “one because he drove while really drunk and he crashed and died and the other one a few years later, died because he got hit by a drunk driver.”

Authorities told KTRK-TV that the driver, identified as Sirkon Ash, 28, was charged with DWI.

This story was originally published July 25, 2017 at 1:42 PM with the headline "Suspected drunken driver stopped in citizen’s arrest."