What kind of awful person deliberately makes a road icy in the winter? The kind of person who does it to cover up a drunk-driving accident. At least police in New Jersey busted an alleged icing scheme cooked up by two men accused of driving while intoxicated.
According to police in Sparta, NH, an officer on patrol in the wee hours of Sunday morning noticed a man walking in an intersection and running in the middle of the road toward a parked and running BWM, reports the Daily Record.
When the officer stopped to talk to the people in the car, he found two 20-year-old guys, including one without his shirt on in 1-degree weather.
He claimed to have fallen down and gotten the shirt wet, but the officer noticed two plastic five gallon buckets filled with water in the car and started to put things together.
According to police, one of the 20-year-olds had been involved in a crash in his BMW, and had allegedly fled back home. He later returned to the scene with his friend driving, cops said, and poured water on the road in the intersection, with the intention to ice it up and then report that the slippery conditions caused the accident, and not booze.
Investigators said they aren’t sure how many trips the men made to dump water, but that the intersection had become too dangerous to drive. To that end, the Department of Public Works had to dump a half ton of salt to make the area safe.
One man was arrested at the scene for processing and breath testing, and was later charged with driving while intoxicated careless, driving, failure to stop at a stop sign, leaving the scene of an accident, failure to report an accident and disorderly conduct for creating a dangerous condition by purposely icing the intersection.
The other man, who’d driven to pick up his friend, was arrested after failing a series of field sobriety tests. He denied driving his car, but had no explanation for how he got it to the intersection, despite sitting in the driver’s seat with the engine running.
He was charged with driving while intoxicated, careless driving and failure to wear a seatbelt.
Sparta police: Drunk drivers ‘iced’ intersection [The Daily Record]
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist
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