Police said Friday that charges have been filed against a Lindenwood student after he caused a power outage on campus when he crashed into a transformer. 

The student was charged Sunday, March 1, in municipal court with careless driving and driving under the influence, according to Lt. Thomas Wilkison, public information officer for St. Charles Police.    

A student, Bradley Getz, took a Snapchat video of the crash scene Sunday morning soon after the crash.

Getz told police the car, a silver 2008 Nissan Maxima, was travelling at “a very high rate of speed” toward West Clay Street, according to an accident report.

The report said the student went off the road into the grass, then hit a concrete pole protecting the electrical box.  Their car pulled the pole out of the ground, and it ended up beneath their car. They came to a stop wedged between the pole and the electrical box.

The crash, which happened around 2:30 a.m. on Sunday, according to Wilkison, damaged a transformer near the Scheidegger Center. The accident knocked out power in several campus buildings, including the Evans Commons, the Library and Academic Resources Center, and several dorms.  In the Spellmann Center, the outage damaged equipment for the campus radio station, mass communications professor Rich Reighard said. Power was restored around 10 p.m.

Wilkison said Lindenwood is filing an insurance claim for the incident.  

He said the student’s car was considerably damaged on the passenger side and was towed from the scene.  The student was not injured in the crash and spent the night in jail before being released in the morning.  

Update January 18, 2022 with information from police report.