A 24-year-old North Carolina man is facing a DUI charge after his car plowed into the Historic Dade County Courthouse and Museum in Trenton Sunday morning, leaving considerable damage to the 1926 building just a year and a half after it reopened from a lengthy renovation. Georgia State Patrol identified the driver as Jacob Stevenson of Cary, North Carolina, who suffered non-life-threatening injuries in the crash.
According to NewsChannel 9, Stevenson was traveling northbound on GA 58, also known as US 11/Main Street, when he approached the roundabout in downtown Trenton around 9:40 a.m. A separate account from DiscoverDade places the timing closer to 9:43 a.m. as the driver approached the same roundabout. Either way, investigators say Stevenson failed to maintain his lane of travel and continued straight through the roundabout instead of following the curve of the road, sending his vehicle into the courthouse itself.
The vehicle has been described as a white Toyota Corolla, according to WDEF. Per the DiscoverDade report, the impact caused considerable damage to the courthouse's exterior wall and the area around the elevator entrance on the building's south end.
Driver Hospitalized, Facing Multiple Charges
Paramedics transported Stevenson by ambulance to Erlanger hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he was treated for injuries described as non-life-threatening. The same report notes he has been charged with DUI, failure to maintain lane and other unspecified traffic-related charges, though no booking or court documents have been made public detailing those additional counts.
The crash struck a building with deep roots in Dade County history. The courthouse was built in 1926 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press. The building closed due to disrepair in November 2010 and sat shuttered for nearly 15 years before reopening in April 2025 following an extensive restoration, the newspaper reported.
Georgia's Broader Impaired-Driving Picture
The crash lands amid a mixed national and state picture on drunk driving. Georgia recorded 433 traffic fatalities involving at least one alcohol-impaired driver in 2023, a 15% drop from 509 the year before, according to the Georgia Governor's Office of Highway Safety. More than one in four fatal crashes statewide that year involved a driver with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08 grams per deciliter or higher — the threshold Georgia uses to define legal impairment, with stricter limits for drivers under 21 and commercial operators.
Georgia actually saw the largest decrease in alcohol-impaired driving deaths in the country, per federal data cited by FOX 5 Atlanta, with such deaths falling by more than 100 in a single year. Still, a state analysis covering 2017 through 2021 found that only 54% of DUI citations in Georgia resulted in a DUI conviction, while 17% were reduced to a lesser charge, according to the Governor's Office of Highway Safety.
It remains unclear how extensive the repairs to the courthouse will be or how long they might take, and the building's current operating status has not been detailed in reports. Stevenson's case will move through Dade County's court system as investigators continue documenting the scene.
