New Canaan Police on Nov. 25 arrested a 67-year-old town woman by warrant in connection with an incident from August, charging her with driving under the influence.
At about 5:30 p.m. on Aug. 28 (a Thursday), New Canaan Police Officer Austin Malizia was dispatched to the Nuvance Health parking lot on East Avenue on a report of a woman in gray Lexus with her door open “feeling sick and disoriented,” according to an arrest warrant application obtained by NewCanaanite.com through a public records request.
She was “sitting in the driver seat with the door open and her legs outside of the vehicle planted on the ground,” Malizia said in the application, signed Nov. 21 by a state Superior Court judge.
She was “hunched over making groaning noises stating that she was feeling nauseous” and it took New Canaan EMS several minutes to get her onto a gurney “as she shuffled her feet and complained of abdominal pain,” the application said.
Asked how much she’d had to drink, the Hoyt Street woman “stated that she did not have anything to drink today,” it said.
Yet police could see two brown paper grocery bags in the back seat, on the driver’s side, with three empty bottles of wine in them, Malizia said in his affidavit. The hood of her car was warm, the application said, and officials could smell alcohol on her breath. Asked how long ago she drove to the doctor’s office (about .2 miles from her home), the woman “stated that she drove her car to the doctor’s office about 15 minutes ago,” the application said.
The woman declined to undergo field sobriety and breath tests, and EMS transported her to Norwalk Hospital “due to her high level of intoxication,” which EMTs estimated at about .3.
Police later obtained a search warrant for blood tests that the woman underwent at Norwalk Hospital, which converted to a rate of .24—three times the legal limit of .08.
Police took custody of the woman, who has no other criminal history, at about 4:37 p.m. on Nov. 25. She was released on $1,000 bond and scheduled to appear Dec. 8 in state Superior Court. She has not yet pleaded and her arraignment is now scheduled for Jan. 28, according to Connecticut Judicial Branch records.