Passersby thought a New York man was dead behind the wheel of a locked car in a Lake George motel parking lot. They called the law.
The poor fellow was instead really really really drunk. Like passed out drunk. Like too drunk to walk, let alone drive drunk. Like not bothering a soul drunk.
Warren County sheriff’s deputies saw the car was locked and the man couldn’t respond so they broke the window. That’s when they discovered he was alive, but very drunk.
A blood test (I guess he couldn’t blow in the tube) showed his blood-alcohol content was 0.27 percent. The legal limit in New York for driving while intoxicated is 0.08 percent.
He was parked in a motel parking lot. Parked. On private property. Sleeping it off.
Sheriff’s deputies broke his car window to get to him. The law won.
He was charged with aggravated DWI.
Say what?
If it was that old Mopar in the picture, it IS parked kinda funny… so the cops might reasonably conclude he was too drive to drunk when he parked it. If he wasn’t checked into the motel, with a room full of empty beverage containers, it is probably reasonable to assume he drove there — stone drunk — from wherever he WAS drinking.
HOWEVER… you would think they would cut him SOME sort of break for the fact that he did in fact stop doing what they presume he was doing, rather than continuing until he killed somebody.
There was a lot left unreported in the media so I have made the following assumptions: the car not running, it was parked in the lot, it didn’t matter whether he was a guest of the motel (that’s a trespass issue), and he admitted nothing.
Someone else could have driven him there — no sworn officer actually saw him driving anywhere. The report doesn’t even say it was his car.
Bottom line, for me, is simple. I really dislike drunks but this is an issue of overpolicing, not overdrinking.
A Jewish lady I know puts a male mannequin in the car seat beside her when she goes shopping in order to deter any car jacking attempt. One night when she went to a friend’s house to play cards she parked by the curb and left the mannequin in the car. It was a very cold night, and a guy who was walking his dog and saw the man sitting very still inside the car.
He got suspicious and called the police. The cops arrived and rocked the car to try and awaken the supposed sleeping man, and he fell over in the seat. They broke in and found it was a dummy.
About that time, the woman who owned the car came outside and got a ticket for disturbing the peace and verbal abuse. She later got another ticket for the same thing when her insurance company took its time paying for the busted window.
— George