Police: New Canaan Driver, 16, With Double the Legal Blood-Alcohol Limit for an Adult, in Accident

Commentary: Parents Need to Make Clear to Teens That Drinking Is Unacceptable

Cops: Hangup 911 Call Leads to Teens Drinking at Party, Fake IDs

Public Safety

By David Gurliacci | January 6, 2020

Healthy Living

By FRANK BARTOLOMEO, Ph.D. | February 7, 2017

Public Safety

By David Gurliacci | July 23, 2015

Night Police Lights CT State Police on Facebook March 30-17 uploaded 06-20-17

A 16-year-old New Canaan driver got into a motor vehicle accident sometime before 11:04 p.m., Friday and was found to have a blood-alcohol content of 0.166, double the legal limit for an adult driver, Darien police said. The following accounts are from police and include accusations not proven in court:

Police gave no indication that the teenager was injured in any way in the accident, which left the vehicle off the shoulder of the road and against a fence, facing southbound on the northbound-traffic side of the road. Coincidentally, police were called to the scene a little over 10 hours after New Canaan police charged a Darien teenager with driving with too much alcohol in his bloodstream. In that case, the teenager would have been under the legal blood-alcohol limit if he were an adult over the age of 21. In the Darien incident, the teenager’s blood-alcohol level was tested at 0.166, more than double the legal limit of 0.08 for an adult. (In the New Canaan incident, the level was 0.054, which was still above the 0.02 limit for driver’s under age 21.) Each driver was charged with driving while over that same 0.02 BAC limit.

Teen Drinking Teenage Drinking Darien Thriving Youth Initiative 02-07-17

The team of psychologists, therapists, and educators at the Southfield Center applaud the public health campaign initiated by the Thriving Youth Task Force of The Community Fund of Darien. ________

— Dr. Frank Bartolomeo, Ph.D is director of behavioral health services at Southfield Center for Development in Darien and a member of the Thriving Youth Task Force. All images and links on this page were added by Darienite.com. A presentation for teenagers and parents on the consequences of teen drinking is scheduled for 7 p.m., Tuesday at Darien High School Auditorium.

________

By any measure, binge drinking during adolescence is a serious public health concern with both immediate and serious consequences for teenagers and their families and with long-term costs to our society. Neuroscientific research over the last 10 years has conclusively demonstrated that alcohol not only affects the developing adolescent brain differently from an adult brain, but can interfere with normal brain functioning.

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A 911 call in which the caller hung up without saying anything led to police visiting a Crimmins Road home at 11:30 p.m. Sunday, where they found a teenage drinking party breaking up. No arrests were made, but parents were notified. Police gave this account of the incident:

When police arrived, they found teenagers running down the street, across the street and into a neighbor’s yard. The 16-year-old girl who answered the door at the home where the party had taken place said she didn’t serve alcohol to anyone, but some teenagers came to the house without permission, and they were allowed inside. She said she had just kicked them out because they showed up uninvited.