In People v. Snow 138 AD2d 217 (4th Dept 1988), affd, 74 N.Y.2d 671 (1989) the defendant ran a red light, struck and seriously injured a pedestrian and was found to have a blood alcohol reading of .15, well above the threshold for intoxication. He was charged, among other crimes, with DWI as a felony, due to a previous DWI conviction, Assault in the First Degree, Assault in the Second Degree and Vehicular Assault in the Second Degree. The Defendant was found guilty, among other crimes, of Assault in the First Degree and DWI. The Assault in the First Degree charge he was convicted of, Penal Law 120.10 (4), required that it be proven that: "[i]n the course of and in furtherance of the commission or attempted commission of a felony or of immediate flight therefrom, he or another participant if there be any, causes serious physical injury to a person other than one of the participants." The Court dismissed Defendant's First Degree Assault convictions on a number of related grounds. First, the Court noted that the legislature had enacted vehicular assault and vehicular manslaughter statutes to cover injuries and deaths caused by intoxicated drivers and had clearly intended these statutes, rather than the general assault statutes, to cover conduct like that which the Defendant had engaged in. The Court also focused, however, on the irrationality of punishing the Defendant at a higher level for the assault he had committed than would be possible had he killed his victim and held that such a result would be contrary to the intent of the legislature in enacting the assault statutes. The Snow court also held that Defendant could not be convicted of an assault based upon a conviction for DWI because DWI was a strict liability offense and the conviction of a Defendant for an assault committed in the course of and in furtherance of a felony required that the underlying felony include a culpable mental state.