One of Santa Fe’s top chefs is out of the hospital and back at work after crashing his sport-utility vehicle last weekend, but he still faces a charge of aggravated drunken driving.
Mark Kiffin — the 48-year-old owner of The Compound Restaurant — in a brief phone interview Thursday declined to comment on the circumstances surrounding the early Sunday morning accident or whether he’d been drinking prior to crashing off Interstate 25 southeast of Santa Fe.
A police report said a Santa Fe County sheriff’s deputy who was dispatched to the scene about 4 a.m. Sunday found Kiffin’s heavily damaged 1998 blue Land Rover about 50 feet off of Interstate 25, approximately two miles from the Eldorado exit.
“(Kiffin) was lying face down on the ground in a semi-conscious state,” the report states. “(Kiffin) had a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage emitting from his person.”
Kiffin suffered unspecified injuries in the crash and was taken to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center. At the hospital, Kiffin refused six times to allow a hospital technician to draw a sample of his blood for testing to determine alcohol content, the report says.
“Mr. Kiffin then stated that he did not understand what was being asked of him regarding the test, saying ‘I didn’t do anything wrong, I’m not drunk,’ ” according to the report.
Kiffin was never arrested, however, because a doctor determined he needed to be admitted to the hospital for treatment of his injuries. He was issued a criminal summons to appear in court on a charge of aggravated driving while intoxicated — which was issued because he refused the test — and for careless driving.
The police report says Kiffin’s Land Rover crossed over the edge of the road and struck the end of a guardrail, destroying 45 feet of it. The vehicle then rolled over and ended up on its wheels.
Kiffin, who renovated and reopened The Compound in 2000 after spending several years working with restaurateur Mark Miller, was named the James Beard Foundation’s Best Chef in the Southwest 2005.
He said Thursday that he was OK and was at work at his Canyon Road restaurant on Wednesday.
Contact Jason Auslander at 986-3076 or :jauslander@sfnewmexican.com.
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