A driving under the influence of alcohol charge against Billy Hammond, University professor and graduate coordinator for the Department of Psychology, was dismissed in court last Thursday, according to Athens-Clarke County court documents.

Hammond was arrested on the morning of Jan. 28 and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol, following too closely and hit and run, according to an Athens-Clarke County police report.

The charge of driving under the influence was dismissed in court on March 29.

The second charge of hit and run was reduced, and Hammond was found guilty and only required to serve six months of unsupervised probation and 20 hours of community service work. He was also fined $500, according to the document.

He was found guilty of the third charge which was also reduced to too fast for conditions and required to pay a $300 fine.

Hammond said the incident happened when he was at a traffic light at the end of an exit ramp and the car ahead of him was turning right on a red.

“When I looked back, the car in front of me had stopped peremptorily, and I hit that car on their back bumper,” he wrote in an email to The Red Black. “I am not sure why that car stopped so suddenly, but I think that it was because they had seen the police officer (as had I) approaching on 441.”

The other car pulled over immediately, but Hammond was in the intersection with a deployed airbag and could see the police officer and other cars approaching the intersection.

Hammond wrote he decided to cross the intersection in order to find a safer place to get off the road because it was easier to pull forward with a deployed airbag and could not turn right because his steering wheel was seized.

“In the beginning of the on-ramp across the intersection, there was no shoulder, and I could see the police officer following me,” he wrote. “I pulled up further and parked soon after his lights were turned on.”

He wrote the officer pulled over and came up to his car and asked him to get out, and he told the police officer he was just looking for a safe place to pull over.

“He told me that I should have just stopped and that he had a video of me driving across the intersection,” he wrote. “He then asked me if I had been drinking, did a field sobriety test, including a breathalyzer, arrested me and ushered me off to the jail.

Hammond said the driving under the influence charge was mysterious.

“I did have a glass of wine with dinner, but I did not feel even slightly inebriated,” he wrote. “I do have reflux and an unusual metabolism, I am an ultra-athlete, and that can make breath tests artificially high.”

He said the hit and run charge was also mysterious.

“I saw the police officer well before the accident, as I presume the other car did,” he wrote. “I suspect that was why they stopped unexpectedly, and I certainly wasn’t trying to abscond in front of him, also with an airbag in my face, horn blowing, and a crunched fender seizing my right tire.”