When a Ford Econoline van passed a stopped school bus on the Post Road on Monday, a police officer stopped the driver, who, it turned out, was wanted for not appearing in court on a 2013 charge of driving while under the influence, police said.
The driver, a 38-year-old Stamford man, passed the school bus near the intersection of the Post Road and Salt Box Lane at about 7:37 a.m., police said.
He was arrested on a charge of second-degree failure to appear in court and released on the $1,000 bond that had already been set by a judge who was hearing the DUI case in state Superior Court in Stamford. He is scheduled to appear Thursday in the same court.
Despite the arrest on a six-year-old warrant charging him with failure to appear in court, this is not appear to be the first time that the man has appeared in a Connecticut courthouse in the years after he allegedly failed to show up in court on the DUI charge.
According to the Connecticut Judicial Branch website, the man (or someone with the same first and last names and birth year) appeared in state Superior Court in Norwalk on Dec. 31, 2017 and pleaded guilty to driving with a suspended driver’s license.
It would be extremely unusual for a DUI case to last three or four years in Connecticut courts. Perhaps the court records explain why the DUI case lasted so long, or why the warrant wasn’t served when he appeared in court in 2017 or that this is a different person with the same name and birth year. We may never know: The court records for the Darien arrest have been, for some reason, “statutorily sealed” according to the website.
Editor’s note: Darienite.com is not releasing the man’s name or arrest photo.