Police in Nanjing have detained 21 drunk drivers in two days after the eastern Chinese city witnessed an accident in which five people, including a pregnant woman, were killed and four others injured by a drunk driver.
The drivers were detained as part of a 100-day campaign launched Wednesday to crack down on drinking and driving. Police found 297 people drinking and driving Wednesday and Thursday, including 39 people who were intoxicated, a police spokesman said Friday.
Twenty-one of the 39 drunk drivers have begun a 15-day detention while the 18 others will be detained after processing.
Even on Friday morning, a drunk driver ran into four pedestrians and injured two of them on the pedestrian walkway in the city, the spokesman added.
In the Tuesday accident, the driver, surnamed Zhang, 43, crashed his car into a street lamp, then hit a watermelon stand before hitting nine passersby and six other vehicles.
Three people died at the scene and two died later. Four others were slightly injured.
Zhang had 381 mg of alcohol per deciliter of blood, well above the legal limit of 80 mg.
(Xinhua News Agency July 4, 2009)
