A fired Fukuoka municipal official denied Tuesday he was too drunk to control his car when it slammed into the rear of another vehicle last August on a bridge, sending it into Hakata Bay and three children in it to their deaths.
In the opening session of his trial in the high-profile August 2006 traffic accident, which triggered public calls for tougher preventive measures and penalties against drunken driving, Futoshi Imabayashi, 22, told the Fukuoka District Court: "I reject the view that I had difficulty driving properly under the influence of alcohol," while pleading guilty to charges of hit-and-run and failing to rescue the victims.
Imabayashi, who was fired from his job after the accident, had been waging a pretrial battle with prosecutors over whether he should be accused of a more serious offense than negligence.