By STEPHANIE BEECKEN
6 News Reporter
BLAINE (WATE) - A man and woman escaped early Monday morning after their sports utility vehicle plunged into the Holston River in Grainger County, but they wound up facing charges for the incident.
Sheriff Scott Layel says it happened around 3:00 Monday morning along the 1500 block of Mitchell Bend Road.
Misty Lynn Hatfield, 33, of Sharps Chapel and Dustin Lynn Brown, 30, of Luttrell, are charged with leaving the scene of a crash, public intoxication, criminal trespassing by motor vehicle and failure to report a crash.
Officials say the pair may have been under the influence of an undetermined hypnotic narcotic while they were mud bogging in a 2005 Ford Explorer. They saw an open area and thought the field they were in continued because it was dark. The Explorer went through a picket fence and into the river.
Hatfield and Brown made it out of the Explorer and got to a nearby house where 911 call was made. They were taken to UT Medical Center for treatment.
Officials described the pair as "nearly incoherent," and said those two claimed two more people may have been in the Explorer when it went in the water.
A Knox County Sheriff's Office helicopter found the Explorer submerged in the river about 200 yards away.
However when the farmer who owns the field used his tractor to pull the Explorer to the bank, officers found no one inside it. Further searches by air came up empty.
"We are researching cell phone records as well as surveillance cameras at areas frequented by the two," Sheriff Layel said. "Their memories are a total blank after Saturday afternoon other than a few fuzzy memories, which have complicated the investigation."
Officers searched the Ford Explorer and came up empty.
A farmer used heavy equipment to pull the Explorer to the bank.
The helicopter was able to land in a nearby field.
Misty Lynn Hatfield (source: Grainger County Sheriff's Office)
Dustin Lynn Brown (source: Grainger County Sheriff's Office)
