Sandwich Cops locate driver in nearby woods after vehicle strikes...

SANDWICH – DEVELOPING – At about 2:00AM, police discovered a heavily damaged Jeep without its driver, after receiving reports it had just struck a utility pole in the area of 18 South Sandwich Road. The driver was initially nowhere to be found…

Sandwich police had a K-9 responding in an effort to track the driver, when a patrolman noticed something in the nearby woods. It apparently turned out to be the missing driver and he did not appear injured.

Officers called for a Sandwich Rescue to be on the safe side, and they checked out the driver, but did not transport him to the hospital.

As you’ll see in the video, officers suspected the driver could be intoxicated and initiated field sobriety testing along with a portable breathalyzer…

The driver was subsequently handcuffed and transported back to Sandwich Police Headquarters under arrest for OUI.

The driver was wearing green and HN observed festive green beads on the ground just feet from where he was arrested, but whether or not the driver had actually been celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day earlier in the evening has not been officially confirmed…

According to radio traffic, the Jeep’s registration came back to an individual with an address in Warren, Maine. It’s uncertain whether the driver was the actual registered owner…

No further information was available at the time of this report. Just unanswered questions, apart from the usual basic arrest info, which HN hopes to update:

Was the driver actually hiding from police when he was discovered in the woods?
If hiding, was he trying to evade field sobriety testing?
Was he recently at a Saint Patrick’s Day celebration?
If so, had he a splash of the creature?
Had he actually been wearing the green Mardi Gras-type beads discovered just steps from where he was arrested?
Did he hit anything else last evening, aside from allegedly ramming the utility pole? and
Does he realize how lucky he was that no one was hurt?

Those are just a few of the random questions that come to mind…

All suspects are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a Barnstable County court of law.

[Press play… select HD in the settings and enlarge player for best quality…]

HN NOTE: There were only some of the usual shenanigans last evening, several drunks taken into protective custody, but no more than usual. All-and-all, it was relatively quiet during the St. Patrick’s Day overnight. Sandwich had the above OUI arrest. Barnstable did not have any OUIs from 4PM to until the time of this report at 4AM. Yarmouth Police reported they had no OUIs on the Midnight shift. The state police had a crazy moment where they were following behind a slowly moving vehicle with the driver sound asleep at the wheel, that vehicle eventually slowly ran into a guardrail on Route 3 just north of the bridge… at the time of this report, HN was unable to obtain details on how that turned out.

Yarmouth Police had their Operation Safe Ride Home where any citizen could call Town Taxi for a free safe ride home from any licensed Yarmouth liquor establishment. According to a press release, the men and women of the YPD are dedicated to making Yarmouth the Safest Community in the Region…

… and I’m quite sure other police departments around the mid-Cape are right now thinking to themselves, “challenge accepted.”

3/18/2016

Robert Bastille,

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P.S. — Today’s HyTown Vignette is brought to you by Johnny Cash… [Press play]