Ten­nessee state Sen. Ken Yager faces DUI, hit-and-run charges after Geor­gia arrest

Yager was jailed on Tues­day after being arrest­ed by the Geor­gia State Patrol of Jekyll Island. Yager’s blood alco­hol con­cen­tra­tion lev­el was record­ed at 0.14, above the legal lim­it of 0.08.

“An unfor­tu­nate inci­dent hap­pened last night,” Yager said in a state­ment. “On the advice of my attor­ney, I can­not dis­cuss the par­tic­u­lars at this time. I am and will con­tin­ue to coop­er­ate ful­ly with author­i­ties to bring this inci­dent to an appro­pri­ate con­clu­sion.”

Yager, 77, post­ed bond on Wednes­day and was released. 

Geor­gia State Troop­ers were noti­fied that a Ford Edge with Ten­nessee license plates was involved in a hit-and-run on Jekyll Island on Tues­day evening, accord­ing to the Geor­gia State Patrol’s pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion.

Troop­ers locat­ed the Ford Edge in a park­ing lot where emer­gency med­ical ser­vices were already on the scene eval­u­at­ing Yager, who had tripped and fall­en.

The state Troop­ers iden­ti­fied Yager as the dri­ver of the vehi­cle and not­ed, “a dis­tinct odor of alco­hol on his breath,” pre­lim­i­nary details state. Yager said he had “a cou­ple glass­es of wine pre­vi­ous­ly in the day.” He told law enforce­ment that he was involved in the ear­li­er crash but “stat­ed that he thought every­one was fine, that he spoke with the oth­er dri­ver, and decid­ed to leave not know­ing the police were in (sic) route,” accord­ing to the police report.

Accord­ing to cam­paign finance records, Yager used his cam­paign account to pay for the lease of the Ford. The Ford Edge involved in the inci­dent has a Ten­nessee license plate read­ing “KEY,” accord­ing to the inci­dent report. Video footage of Yager’s field sobri­ety test dur­ing his arrest shows a por­tion of the plate that appears to include the state seal. The state seal is fea­tured on Sen­ate license plates.

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Accord­ing to Ten­nessee Sen­ate rules, because Yager was dri­ving with leg­isla­tive plates at the time of the arrest, he will either auto­mat­i­cal­ly lose the posi­tion of cau­cus chair­man or can request a hear­ing by the Com­mit­tee on Ethics to deter­mine if he should be sus­pend­ed from his posi­tion.

Yager’s cur­rent term in the Ten­nessee Sen­ate ends in Novem­ber 2028.