[bluesdave]

The following story is in today's Sydney Morning Herald:

A drunken driver in the US state of Georgia hit a telephone pole support wire that decapitated his passenger, then drove 20km home and slept in his bloodied clothes, leaving the headless body in his truck, police said.

A neighbour walking with his young daughter yesterday morning discovered Daniel Brohm's headless corpse in the truck in John Kemper Hutcherson's driveway in Marietta and called authorities, said Corporal Dana Pierce, county police spokesman.

Officers found Hutcherson asleep inside his home. He was visibly drunk and his clothes were bloody, authorities said. They later found Brohm's severed head at the crash site.

"It's hard for one to imagine that you would drive miles from a crash site to your home, turning in various directions, and yet not know what has happened to a passenger sitting next to you," Pierce said.

Hutcherson, 21, was charged with vehicular homicide, driving under the influence and failure to stop at an accident with death or injury. He was jailed on a $143,000 bond.

Police said Hutcherson and Brohm - friends since high school - were drinking at a bar Saturday night and left after Brohm said he felt sick.

Brohm, 23, apparently was leaning out of the window when Hutcherson hit the support wire about a kilometre from the bar.