An Eldorado man faces a felony drunken-driving charge after crashing head-on early Sunday morning on Interstate 25 into a vehicle carrying four Santa Fe teens who were on their way to go camping, according to the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Department.

Christopher Reilly, 20, admitted drinking five beers and a shot of tequila, and his breath-alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit when deputies arrested him, the Sheriff's Department reported.

Reilly somehow wound up headed south in the northbound fast lane around 12:30 a.m., when his Toyota sedan ran head-on into a white Jeep Cherokee carrying the four teenage boys, who had planned to camp in Pecos, Sheriff Greg Solano said.

Reilly wasn't injured, while two of the teens were treated at St. Vincent Regional Medical Center — the driver for an injured foot and the right-rear passenger for a fractured left elbow.

"We were very lucky we didn't have four fatalities here — or five," Solano said.

Deputies reported Reilly had the smell of alcohol on his breath, looked impaired and failed a series of field-sobriety tests. His breath-alcohol content was .18, above the legal limit of .08, a report said.

Reilly is charged with aggravated driving while intoxicated and reckless driving. Online court records show no prior criminal charges against him.

The collision occurred within the same stretch as other crashes, including a head-on wreck Nov. 11, 2006, that killed five members of a Las Vegas, N.M., family and the drunken driver who had turned in the wrong direction.

Deputies think Reilly, who said he was at a party in the Santa Fe area earlier, might have made a U-turn after missing his exit to Eldorado, according to the sheriff. "It's all speculation," Solano said. "He said he didn't know how he got going the wrong way. He didn't even know he was going the wrong way."

But the circumstances of Sunday's case were different than others, according to Solano. "In a lot of the other incidents, the wrong-way driver was coming from Eldorado, and usually we hypothesize that they went onto the off-ramp," he said. "But in this case, it doesn't look that way."

The sheriff said a crash reconstruction might help to determine how fast the vehicles were traveling.

Contact Doug Mattson at 986-3087 or dmattson@sfnewmexican.com.