When Darien police answered a call from Sedgwick Avenue about a car parked at the end of a resident’s driveway for 20 minutes, its engine running, they found a man slumped behind the wheel, unconscious, with four times the legal limit for blood-alcohol content, police said.
Police gave this account of what happened, including accusations not proven in court:
Photo from Darien P.D.
Arrest photo for Efficace Desert, 37, of Howard Avenue in Bridgeport
At 8:24 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 1, police were called to the driveway of a home on Sedgewick Avenue, not far from Tilley Pond Park. A vehicle had been parked at the end of the driveway for 20 minutes, a resident said.
Police found the vehicle was still running when they arrived. The driver was slumped over the wheel with a sweater over his head. By knocking on the driver’s window and yelling at him, officers were able to arouse him, eventually.
The driver, Efficace Desert, 37, of Howard Avenue in Bridgeport, told police he was driving home from a friend’s house in Stamford and pulled over to sleep.
Officers noticed that Desert had difficulty paying attention and his speech was slurred. He admitted that he had been drinking earlier in the day, but said he stopped drinking at 5 p.m. (about 3 1/2 hours earlier).
Desert couldn’t complete field sobriety tests in an acceptable way, so he was arrested on a charge of driving while under the influence.
At Darien Police Headquarters, breath tests showed a blood-alcohol content of 0.316 at 10:17 p.m. (almost two hours after police were called to the scene) and 0.311at 10:37 p.m. A slightly higher blood-alcohol content, at 0.32, would have been four times the legal limit of 0.08.
Desert was released on a $250 bond at 12:45 a.m. He is scheduled to appear Nov. 12 in state Superior Court in Stamford.