Across the Big 12 Conference, there are few players more skilled at chasing quarterbacks than Sergio Kindle, a hybrid outside linebacker/defensive end for the Texas Longhorns. Last season, Kindle’s sack victims included Oklahoma’s Sam Bradford, Missouri’s Chase Daniel, Texas Tech’s Graham Harrell and Kansas’ Todd Reesing (twice).

To that list Kindle can now add Ashley Zapata’s bedroom. It was the 21-year-old’s apartment that Kindle smashed his car into at approximately 1:50 a.m. last Wednesday morning in Austin, reportedly causing $8,700 in damages to the building while destroying Zapata’s furniture, iPhone, computer and printer. Luckily, Zapata was not among the wreckage. She wasn’t home at the time.

“Everything is in pieces,” her roommate, Emily Dole, told the Austin American-Statesman. “She would have been dead if she had been sitting at her desk.”

Fortunately for Kindle, he was the only one injured in the accident, suffering a concussion from bumping his head, his lawyer, Brian Roark, told the Austin newspaper.

Already convicted of a DWI two years ago, Kindle can add a DWT to his record: Driving While Texting. Or, more accurately, a CWT: Crashing While Texting. Roark said Kindle was probably sending a text message and lost control of his car when he wrecked. Police told the American-Statesman that witnesses reported seeing several people exit the car after the crash and pull it out of the building. They moved Kindle’s car down the street then abandoned it.

John Bianco, UT football spokesman, told the American-Statesman: “Kindle made the football staff aware of what happened, and we’re happy he’s OK.” (Bianco’s one of the good guys in the business, but I sure wish he would have added to his statement, “And we’re especially damn glad Ms. Zapata wasn’t home when Sergio went demolition derby on her apartment.”)

Technically speaking, Kindle left the scene of an accident, but according to Texas law, as long he struck a stationary object, injured no one other than himself and filed a report with the Texas Department of Transportation, he’s off the hook for nothing more than a Class B misdemeanor. Granted, Kindle took the appropriate steps the next morning when he informed his coaches of the incident and the apartment manager, but shouldn’t someone with a DWI on his record face some stiffer consequences for recklessly slamming his car into an apartment, whether it’s empty or not?

Either way, I’m throwing stones from a glass house. Full disclosure time: I’m notoriously guilty of DWT. I’ve mastered the art of steering with the left hand and thumbing the Blackberry with the right, a dangerous addiction that’s yet to drive me into a building. But, Sergio, you’re an inspiration. I’ve seen the light: This guy’s done texting while driving. I’m officially retiring the habit. My Honda Civic and Columbia’s apartment complexes thank you.