DWI

Police: Second DUI for Man Arrested 2 AM Friday on Post Road

Police: DUI Charge for Man, 22, After Car Snaps Utility Pole & Rolls Over on High School Lane

DWI for Man, 42, Stopped Wednesday Night on Hoyt Street

Police: A New Industry Cuts Down on DUI in Darien

DUI Charge for Woman, 44, After Two-Vehicle Accident on Post Road

Crashing the Car Was Only the Beginning of This Man’s Troubles

Police: DUI Charge for Man, 59, Speeding at 53 MPH on Post Rd

Drinking & Driving? Extra Darien Police Patrols Would Like to Meet up with You

Police: DUI for Driver After Crash Into Utility Pole and Fence

Police: Sobriety Tests and Walking Did Not Put Unsteady Arrestee in Danger

Police Say DUI Arrestee Nearly Fell Twice, Then They Had Him Perform Standing Sobriety Test

DUI Charge for Darien Man, 48, After Fence, Street Sign Hit

Cops: Wife & Kids on the Road at 3 AM to Pick Up DUI Arrestee

Police: DUI Charge for 56-Year-Old Man as He Gets on I-95

Police: Accident with Injury, DUI for Driver with 3X Alcohol Limit

Public Safety

By David Gurliacci | June 20, 2016

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By David Gurliacci | June 15, 2016

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By David Gurliacci | May 31, 2016

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By David Gurliacci | April 8, 2016

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By David Gurliacci | March 2, 2016

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By David Gurliacci | February 9, 2016

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By David Gurliacci | January 8, 2016

Holidays

By David Gurliacci | December 29, 2015

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By David Gurliacci | December 9, 2015

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By David Gurliacci | December 6, 2015

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By David Gurliacci | December 1, 2015

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By David Gurliacci | November 30, 2015

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By David Gurliacci | November 30, 2015

Public Safety

By David Gurliacci | November 25, 2015

Public Safety

By David Gurliacci | November 12, 2015

A 30-year-old man who had been arrested on a charge of driving while under the influence in New York state was arrested for DUI after 2 a.m. Friday on the Post Road, Darien police said. Police described the matter with this account (including accusations not proven in court):

At about 2 a.m., Timothy Stillwell drove into Darien from Norwalk on the Post Road when a police officer saw the man’s blue Toyota with New York license plates pass by. The car seemed to have a flat right front tire, and Stillwell soon pulled into a parking lot at 151 Post Road. The officer followed to see if the driver needed help. When the officer approached, Stillwell was walking around the parking lot as he talked into his phone.

A 22-year-old man with more than twice the legal limit for alcohol in his blood drove his car off the road near Darien High School, tore up 50 feet of grass, hit and snapped a utility pole and caused his car to roll over, Darien police said. The man was taken to Stamford Hospital with numerous minor injuries on the night of the accident, Monday, April 4. He was arrested June 6, two months after the incident, possibly because getting arrest warrants approved by state prosecutors and judges has become glacially slow after state budget cutbacks. The delay may also have resulted from police needing to execute a search warrant (signed by a judge on April 27) for the hospital to turn over blood test information, which showed his blood-alcohol content was 0.18, over twice the 0.08 legal limit, according to police. Darien police described the incident with this account (which includes accusations not proven in court):

Police were called to High School Lane at 11:41 p..m.

A Darien police officer in a patrol car by the side of the road on Hoyt Street last Wednesday got a tip, according to a police, when a driver stopped to tell her that the white van the driver had been behind was driving all over the road. The tip led to the arrest of a 42-year-old man on charges of driving while intoxicated. Darien police described what happened next in this account (including accusations not proven in court):

The officer, who had been stopped near St. John Cemetery, started following the van south on Hoyt Street at about 9:48 p.m. She saw the work van, a 2015 Mercedes Sprinter, swerving within the right lane, as the tipster had said it was, and cross the double-yellow line, as the tipster had also described. She pulled the van over near the intersection of Hoyt Street and Briar Brae Road.

Darien police have noticed that there have been fewer arrests for intoxicated driving recently, and they think they know why. It involves something else they’ve seen in recent months — many more Uber drivers (or drivers from similar services) picking up tipsy passengers late at night from bars and restaurants. “Our DWI [driving while intoxicated] arrests are actually down a little bit, and the reason why I think we see that […] is the Uber drivers are doing a booming business in Darien” Police Capt. Don Anderson said at the April 5 quarterly town department heads meeting with the Board of Selectmen. “Downtown weekend nights, we actually almost have an Uber parking lot where people are trying to park as close as they can to our local nightlife restaurants to pick up fares,” Anderson said. He continued:

“I think people are being very responsible.

A 44-year-old woman was charged with driving while under the influence of alcohol after she caused a minor motor vehicle accident last Wednesday on the Post Road, police said. Darien police described the incident with this account (including accusations not proven in court):

The woman, a Stamford resident, was driving east on the Post Road just before 6:45 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 20, when her Nissan Rogue rear-ended another SUV, a Chevrolet Equinox, near the intersection with West Norwalk Road. No injuries resulted. The Rogue suffered front-end damage; the Equinox, rear-end; damage to both vehicles was minor.

According to police, a 33-year-old Stratford man at about 3 p.m. on Dec. 13:

— was driving erratically on Mansfield Avenue,
— while he was intoxicated, and
— crashed a car belonging to his brother,
— left the accident scene (where the car started burning and was destroyed), and then
— went into a nearby house through an open garage, then was told to leave by the homeowner. Police said the family of the man told them that he has an emotional health condition. No injuries resulted from the incident. Darien police described the incident with this account (with accusations not proven in court):

Just before the accident, two witnesses told police that the man was driving erratically on Mansfield Avenue, traveling north.

Shortly before 2 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 28, a police officer watching traffic on the Post Road clocked a car at 53 mph, driven by an intoxicated man who failed to stop for a red light before he turned onto a side street, police said.

Darien police gave this further account (with accusations not proven in court):

The officer was parked at the intersection of Purdy Lane and the Post Road when he saw the 2000 gray Honda Civic traveling west toward Stamford. The speed limit for the Post Road there is 35 mph. The car drove into Stamford with the police officer in pursuit. The Honda didn’t stop for a red light before turning from Route 1 (which is East Main Street in Stamford) onto Hamilton Avenue or Brookside Drive in Stamford (maps differ over whether Brookside in Stamford extends to Route 1; the driver may have traveled north a bit on Hamilton Avenue and then turned right onto nearby Brookside Drive).

Darien police have extra patrols through the holiday season looking for drunk drivers and other unsafe drivers at night on town roads. The state Department of Transportation has provided funding to the department for overtime to put extra police officers on patrol for the last two weeks of the year, according to Darien police. Patrols will be on the road through New Year’s Day, usually after 8 p.m. and continuing late into the night. ____________

See also: State Police Have Extra Patrols Out for New Year’s Eve Drunk Driving (Dec. 29)

Police say that after a 58-year-old woman crashed through a fence on Raymond Street and her vehicle’s air bag deployed, she insisted she was fine and just wanted to go home. But police made other plans, and she eventually was charged with driving while under the influence. Darien police gave this account (consisting of accusations not proven in court) of the matter:

The driver, a Norwalk resident, eventually told police after her arrest that she had been drinking three or four mojitos at a friend’s home in Stamford. At 6:55 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 24, police were called to the scene of a one-vehicle accident on Raymond Avenue near its intersection with Musket Lane.

Darien police were able to keep a man safe just before they arrested him Nov. 24 on a DUI charge, despite the man repeatedly losing his balance while he was in their care, a spokesman for the Police Department said.

“To my knowledge the Department has no reason whatsoever to believe anything other than that the involved officers acted professionally while keeping in mind the safety of everyone involved,” said Sgt. Jeremiah Marron, a Police Department spokesman. Marron said that police are trained to keep intoxicated people from falling when they’re unsteady on their feet during DUI field sobriety tests. The spokesman also said that at another point, when the man started walking diagonally toward traffic, there was no indication in the report that he came close to walking into an oncoming vehicle.

An 8:51 a.m. call to Darien police about a disabled car creating a traffic hazard on a roadway led to a charge of driving while under the influence for a 52-year-old town resident. According to police: When they arrived at the scene, after the driver twice lost his balance (and was twice assisted by police officers to keep him from falling down), he was still asked to perform a field sobriety test. The second time he lost his balance he began walking toward oncoming traffic. In the third part of these tests, the driver is told to stand on one leg. At that point, he lost his balance for the third time, and a police officer rushed in to keep him from falling. Darien police described the incident further with this account (including accusations not proven in court):

When police arrived at Mansfield Avenue near its intersection with Tower Drive on Tuesday, Nov.

After a resident’s fence and a town street sign were hit by a vehicle Saturday, patrol officers followed a trail of oil to a parked Jeep Grand Cherokee and arrested a 48-year-old man for driving while under the influence of alcohol, police said. Darien police described the incident with this account (which includes accusations not proven in court):

A Maple Street resident who lives near the intersection of Maple Street and Relihan Road told police that when his fence was heavily damaged, he saw a vehicle headed toward nearby Dubois Street. After seeing the damage to the fence, a patrol officer found what appeared to be a piece of the vehicle. Then the officer followed line of oil on the roadway, passing a stop sign that was knocked off its pole. Another officer who followed the trail of oil traced it to a driveway on Dubois Street.

A 56-year-old man, later charged with driving while under the influence, hit a tree on Mansfield Avenue sometime before 3 a.m., receiving minor injuries, police said. Then (apparently after she received his phone call) his wife drove from Weston to Darien find him, with their small children in the car, police said. The man later told police he hid from them when they arrived at the scene, according to police. In a further complication, the incident occurred in June. Since the man, Donald Robinson Jr., went to a hospital, Darien police had to get a search warrant for his blood sample and then an arrest warrant.

While the 56-year-old driver of a 2010 Porsche Cayenne was still on the on-ramp from Ledge Road to Interstate 95, he was going 65 mph and had more than double the legal alcohol limit in his blood, according to police. Darien police described the incident with this account (containing accusations not proven in court):

A police officer saw Andrew Fisch of Highland Avenue in Norwalk cross the double yellow line on the Post Road twice as he drove west toward Ledge Road at 1:09 p.m.

The officer activated his vehicle’s emergency lights and followed the car onto the highway. Fisch stopped at the Interstate 95 South rest stop. He told the officer he was going home after having a few drinks at a bar. His eyes were glassy and bloodshot, and the officer smelled a strong odor of alcohol coming from Fisch’s car as he talked with the driver and after Fisch was told to get out of the car, the officer smelled alcohol on his breath.

« August 2022 »

A three-vehicle accident that resulted in an injury for one Darien man was caused by an intoxicated driver who had more than three times the legal amount of alcohol in his blood, Darien police said. The 53-year-old driver was charged with driving while under the influence after Darien police used a search warrant to get the driver’s hospital records and then arrested him on a warrant after the Sept. 21 accident. The driver was previously charged with driving while under the influence in 2011 in Stamford. Darien police described the case in this account (containing accusations not proven in court):

Jaroslav Judak was driving a Chevrolet Explorer van south on Hollow Tree Ridge Road around 4 p.m. that day, a Monday, when he made a left turn onto Heights Road — but continued turning left too far and crossed the double yellow lines on Heights.