Two Coram Road neighbors insist police should have arrested a woman who was “clearly drunk” after crashing her car in front of their homes.
A spokesman for the Shelton Police Department said they are reviewing the allegations. Police confirmed a crash took place and that no arrests were made.
Neighbors said the crash happened at about 11:15 p.m. June 30, just after a sharp curve on Coram Road. The car went off the road, over a pile rocks and several mailboxes before coming to rest on the lawn at 28 Coram Road.
Danielle Elwood and Gary Haydek live across the street from the crash site. They came outside after hearing the noise.
Elwood’s husband, William, a Shelton firefighter, helped the woman out of her car.
Haydek saw the woman and immediately thought — she’s drunk.
“She didn’t appear like she could walk. She was staggering all over the place. She reeked of alcohol,” Haydek said.
The woman walked across the street to Elwood’s front stoop.
Haydek said the driver wanted help getting the car back on the road so she could leave.
Elwood said the driver kept saying “I can’t get a DUI. I can’t get a DUI.”
Haydek also said he heard her make the statement.
“At least once a minute you heard that phrase come out of her mouth,” Haydek said.
Josh Orosz, 22, lives at 28 Coram Road, where the car crashed onto the front lawn.
He said he heard the driver say — from his front porch while she was across the street on Elwood’s stoop — that she “couldn’t get another DUI.”
Orosz said the driver didn’t appear drunk to him, other than her own statements about DUI.
“She tried to drive off, but Danielle’s husband came out and told her to shut the car off,” Orosz said. “All she kept saying for the next five minutes before the cops showed up was ‘I can’t get another DUI. I can’t get another DUI.’”
Elwood said the responding officer said he did not smell alcohol on the woman’s breath.
“She smelled like she drank the entire bar,” Elwood said. “I could smell it. My husband could smell it. Everybody could smell it except the cop,” she said.
Elwood said the police officer should have at least performed a sobriety test on the driver.
“I asked him if he was going to do a field sobriety test. She’s clearly intoxicated. He said he had no reason to give her one, that she was talking to him perfectly fine,” Elwood said.
Lt. Robert Kozlowsky, spokesman for the Shelton Police Department, said police were not aware of the allegations until the Valley Indy sent an e-mail Friday seeking comment.
Kozlowsky said they’ll review what happened. He said the first step is to talk to the officers involved. The police may also contact the residents interviewed by the Valley Indy.
“It’s something we’ll look into, but right now we only have one side of the story, not from the officer who was on scene,” Kozlowsky said. “I talked to the chief and he wasn’t aware of this incident.”
Kevin Smith, a New Haven attorney who specializes in DUI and civil rights cases, said the situation described to him by the Valley Indy is unusual.
“That is very atypical,” Smith said. “Certainly the accident alone would give the officers reasonable and articulable suspicion — along with the things people at the scene claimed to have seen — to ask the driver whether or not she would perform a field sobriety test.”
Elwood wrote about the incident on her blog, Momotics. The post can be viewed here.
She also said she e-mailed a complaint to Mayor Mark Lauretti, several Shelton Aldermen, a few planning and zoning officials, the patrol division of the Shelton Police Department, a neighborhood watch e-mail address within the police department and to Chris Jones, a Democrat running for mayor.
Haydek said he sent a message about the incident to just about every e-mail listed on the City of Shelton website.
Several neighbors on Coram Road said the street has a serious problem with speeders — let alone alleged drunk drivers.
The Orosz family put handmade arrows on their property, the site of the June 30 crash, with the hope more drivers won’t lose control on the curve.
MAYBE THE COP KNEW HER, OR A LOCAL OFFICAL. WHO KNOWS.BUT THE PEOPLE SHOUL;D KEEP ON THE COPS .
MAKE THEM ACCOUNTABLE !!!
This doesn’t surprise me one bit, and I bet I could guess which cops responded to this incident. As a former Shelton resident and a nearly daily visitor to Coram Rd (til last year, just up the street from where this accident took place) I had to deal with Shelton PD from the victim side several times during a few month period last year.
Let me tell you, letting a suspected drunk driver go is much less serious than what I encountered. A neighbor had broken into a home where I was dropping off the grandchild of the woman who lived there who had recently passed away. We actually surprised the intruder while he was still there and we heard him run to his own house next door. Apparently, he was in the bathroom when we got there, as he left a “present” on the toilet seat as he rushed to get out of the house.
It became apparent that he had stolen several items, including a briefcase full of documents containing the deceased woman’s last social security check. We called 911 and eventually the police responded. When they got there, they recovered the items from the man’s house and yard, and yet they refused to charge him! He said he was allowed into the house by the neighbor and the police believed him, and told us it “seemed like a civil or probate matter.”. Mind you, the man was not related to the neighbors, certainly was not entitled to steal things, and could possibly have entered the house while the 18 yr old was there alone. He had threatened him before!
Since the guy handed over the stolen things and we didn’t physically SEE him in the house, the police just told the guy not to come back on the property and refused to charge him. I asked if they could test the “stuff” left on the toilet seat for DNA to prove it was him, and they laughed saying “this isn’t Law & Order” and when pressed further said “we wouldn’t have any way to test it against his DNA because this isn’t a case that would be serious enough to get a warrant for DNA testing.” I am flabbergasted to this day. He broke in to a home through a window he removed a screen from (cops missed that too) stole items and documents, possessed the stolen property at the time including the social security check, and they did NOTHING.
Seriously, if I lived on that part of Coram Rd, I’d be worried about more than just drunk drivers and slack cops. There’s a pretty dangerous guy living there who knows he can break in and steal and the cops won’t do a damn thing about it.
Looking at the location on Google Maps/Earth, the “curve” on the road is minimal and is being highly exaggerated by the people in the video. What IS a problem is Summit Avenue diverging at a very shallow angle, which looks to a driver in the dark like Coram road keeps going straight.
At least when the Google Earth car came by, the center line is almost completely gone. If there was a reflective line on the road showing the gentle curve to the left, it’s highly unlikely people would be confused.