Police: Drunken St. Charles driver damaged three homes

A drunken driver managed to damage three homes, uproot a small tree and cause a small power outage in a wild one-car crash on the 700 block of South Third Street early Wednesday morning in St. Charles, according to authorities.

Richard J. Rusin, a 34-year-old St. Charles man, was driving north on South Third Street near its intersection with Bowman Street around 1:30 a.m. when he lost control of his car while turning, according to a news release from the St. Charles Police Department.

Police say Rusin's car, a 2005 Lincoln, left the roadway and entered a front yard where it struck a berm and was launched airborne. The airborne car struck a guide wire for a utility pole, uprooted a small tree and smashed into a house while the car was 10 feet in the air and then hit another house before it landed upside down in a driveway, according to the release. The tree that it uprooted ended up on the second story of the second house the car hit. A window on a third house was damaged by flying debris from the vehicle.

Rusin was injured in the crash and taken to Delnor Community Hospital in Geneva.

The crash caused a short power outage for the area that was fixed by the St. Charles Electric Department. A building inspector surveyed the damage to the homes and declared them to be habitable despite the serious damage.

Rusin was charged with DUI and improper lane usages.