A Jefferson City police officer patrolling nearby heard a loud crash and breaking glass Thursday night, then found a pickup truck had plowed through a handrail and into the AutoZone auto parts store on Missouri Boulevard. The driver was arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated, reckless driving and first-degree property damage after refusing to submit to field sobriety and chemical testing, according to a police email.
The officer was patrolling Stadium Boulevard at the time, per the police email cited by ABC 17 News, which first reported the crash. A Jefferson City Police Department spokesman said someone crashed a pickup truck into the AutoZone on Thursday night, though initial reports pointed to the store's location on Stadium Boulevard before it was confirmed the crash happened at the store on Missouri Boulevard. That store sits at 2409 Missouri Boulevard, near the Stadium Boulevard intersection, a commercial stretch lined with auto service centers and retail businesses, according to KRCG 13.
Police have not released the driver's name. As of Friday afternoon, no associated charges had been filed on Casenet, the state's online court records system, according to the same report.
Refusal Triggers Automatic License Consequences
The driver's refusal to submit to field sobriety and chemical testing carries its own legal weight independent of any criminal case. Under Missouri's Implied Consent law, codified at Revised Statute § 577.041, any driver who refuses an officer's request for chemical sobriety testing faces an automatic one-year administrative revocation of their driver's license, and that refusal can also be used as evidence in court.
Because the driver declined testing, police obtained a warrant to collect a blood sample, per the police email. Missouri case law allows officers to conduct a nonconsensual blood draw once a court-issued warrant has been secured following a refusal, a mechanism designed to preserve evidence of intoxication even when a driver won't cooperate voluntarily.
What the Property Damage Charge Could Mean
The first-degree property damage charge the driver faces on suspicion stems from Missouri Revised Statute § 569.100, which applies when someone knowingly damages another party's property in excess of $750. That offense is classified as a Class E felony, carrying a potential sentence of up to four years in prison.
The reckless driving allegation likely falls under Missouri's actual statutory equivalent, since the state has no law formally titled reckless driving. Instead, Revised Statute § 304.012 governs careless and imprudent driving, requiring motorists to exercise the highest degree of care; when a crash results, the violation is prosecuted as a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail.
A Broader Pattern of Impaired Driving in Missouri
The crash adds to a string of vehicle-into-building incidents in Jefferson City, including a 2025 collision in which a vehicle struck the side of a structure, breached a living space and injured an occupant, according to KRCG 13's reporting on local emergency responses.
Statewide, impaired driving remains a persistent factor in Missouri traffic deaths. Roughly 12 percent of all traffic fatalities in the state involve alcohol-impaired driving, with 116 people killed in 2024 alone in crashes involving at least one impaired driver, according to the Missouri Department of Transportation. A July 2025 report from the Missouri Behavioral Health Epidemiology Workgroup, drawing on state highway patrol data, found that alcohol-impaired drivers were involved in 3.7 percent of all Missouri crashes, but those crashes proved far deadlier — carrying a 2.7 percent fatality rate compared with just 0.7 percent for crashes without an impaired driver.
Missouri law enforcement agencies, including local departments, regularly take part in the statewide Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over campaign, coordinated by MoDOT and the Missouri Coalition for Roadway Safety, which ramps up high-visibility patrols aimed at catching impaired drivers before crashes like Thursday night's occur.
