There are people who get caught drunk driving and hire a good lawyer. There are people who flee the country. And then there is Si, a man from Hunan, China, who looked at his legal situation and decided the move was to die.Si had been arrested for drunk driving in January of last year—his third offense, the first two also involving driving without a license while intoxicated. Under Chinese law, a blood alcohol concentration at or above 0.08% constitutes a criminal offense, punishable by detention, a criminal record, and license revocation. Repeat offenders face significantly harsher consequences. Si, staring down a likely prison sentence, apparently concluded that faking his own death was the more reasonable option.While out on bail, Si recruited his mother and grandmother, bought a coffin, scattered empty medicine bottles around his home, practiced holding his breath, and used cooling equipment to lower his body temperature—all to stage a convincing drug overdose. Neighbors were shown a body. His family told anyone who asked that the drugs had deformed his face, which was why it remained covered. The funeral happened the same day. By the time the coffin went into the ground, Si was already en route to Yunnan Province, several hundred miles south, looking for work.A Man Staged His Own Funeral After His Third Drunk Driving ArrestThe plan had a few problems. Police, notified of the death, arrived to find the coffin already buried—but they also noticed that it had been purchased before Si died, and that his family had contacted neither an ambulance nor the authorities at any point during the apparent overdose. A death certificate didn’t exist. There was no cremation record. His household registration had never been canceled. Surveillance footage, bank transactions, and phone records confirmed what police had already suspected. A manhunt followed.Si was arrested in April and sentenced to five months of criminal detention and a 20,000 yuan fine, about $3,000. His mother and grandmother are now under separate criminal investigation for harboring and shielding an offender. The prosecutor handling the case had a word for mainland media: “Faking one’s death to evade the law is not only futile but can also result in further criminal liability.” The story hit 10 million views on Chinese social media, and the public didn’t have much patience for Si’s predicament. “Is it really so difficult not to drive after drinking?” one commenter wrote. The answer, for Si, needed a coffin, a fake corpse, and a multi-month manhunt to arrive at.The post A Man Faked His Own Death to Avoid a Drunk Driving Sentence. It Did Not Go Well. appeared first on VICE.