David Livingston/Getty ImagesThe hits keep coming for Gary Collins.
The former host of Hour Magazine and The Miss America Pageant is now wanted for misdemeanor hit-and-run after police in Jackson, Miss., allege he hit a woman, her husband and their child with his jeep, causing a three-car pile up, and then abruptly left the scene.
"It was a possible three car accident yesterday that occurred around 4:08 p.m. while driving northbound on I-55. He struck a Ford Focus," said Jackson Police Department spokeswoman Colendula Green.
According to the cops, the victim, Cheryl Hales, got his plates and subsequently filed an affidavit for an arrest warrant. A judge is due to sign off on it sometime today at which point authorities will pick him up and charge him for misdemeanor hit-and-run.
No injuries were reported, nor was there any immediate word whether alcohol was involved. But the victim's husband, Perry Hales, believes there was.
Hales told local affiliate WAPT that he smelled alcohol on the TV personality's breath, adding angrily: "He wasn't concerned for my wife's well-being. He wasn't concerned for my child's well-being. He simply walked over got in his vehicle and left."
Collins however denied he had been drinking before the collision and that he left only after the Hales failed to approach him and authorities took too long to respond.
"You would think if you were in an accident like that, someone would say, 'I realize it's your fault, but are you OK?' But nobody did that...I would think that's the courteous thing to do if somebody would have said, 'We're going to get this thing resolved. We've called the police and they're going to come out,' " he said.
The easygoing Home Show host may be a smooth talker on the tube, but his penchant for boozing behind the wheel has landed him in serious trouble in the past.
Collins already has three DUI arrests to his name, the last one coming in February 2009 when he was busted while driving a motor home intoxicated, an offense for which he pleaded no contest and received 120 days of house arrest.
Before that, the ex-Circus of the Stars player was sentenced to four years probation and spent four days in a Glendale, Calif., jail in January 2008 after copping to drunken driving charges from a crash where one of the victims died. However he was determined not to be at fault.
He was also found not guilty of DUI in 2002 in Mississippi where he and his wife, former Miss America Mary Ann Mobley, make their residence.