Sheriff: Man told not to smoke on bus sets driver's hair on fire, leads wild 95-mph chase [View all]

What began as one man’s trip to the supermarket for two gallons of milk — in, of all places, Georgia’s dairy capital — spilled over into a 95-mph police chase through two counties.

All because, as the Putnam County sheriff tells it, a man named Michael Douglas Freeman wanted to smoke a cigarette on a bus — and because Freeman had apparently been drinking more than milk.

Freeman, a retiree who lives near the northern shores of Lake Sinclair, was a passenger on a Putnam Transit bus Friday afternoon. He had ridden the bus into Eatonton on Friday morning and was toting the milk he’d just bought.

About 3:30 p.m., when he was almost home, Freeman lit a cigarette, Sheriff Howard Sills said. The woman driving the 20-seater bus with Freeman and another man on board promptly told Freeman to put out his cigarette.

Read more here: http://www.macon.com/news/local/article130744334.html