June 20, 2019
Police in Indiana have reported that a senior administrator at the University of Notre Dame was taken into custody on June 12 following a traffic stop. The 61-year-old man, who has worked as an associate vice president at the University since 2011 according to media reports, faces a raft of charges including a felony drunk driving count and a misdemeanor leaving the scene of an accident count. He is being held at the St. Joseph County Jail.
Officers from the St. Joseph County Police Department pulled over the man’s Hyundai SUV after being dispatched to Portage Road. A police report reveals that officers stopped the vehicle because it was traveling slower than the posted speed limit and appeared to be damaged. Officers say that they noticed severe front-end damage on the vehicle, and the man behind the wheel was incoherent and told them that he had struck a tree. The man was asked to perform a series of field sobriety exercises after officers allegedly detected the odor of alcohol on his breath.
Officers claim that the man gave them contradictory accounts of where had had been and how much alcohol he had consumed. He was taken into custody after allegedly failing the field sobriety test. A blood test performed at a nearby hospital is said to have revealed his blood alcohol concentration to be .16%. This is double the legal driving limit in Indiana.
Police officers are only permitted to stop cars if they have probable cause to do so, and experienced criminal defense attorneys may seek to have drunk driving charges dismissed if their clients were pulled over for behavior that does not violate the motor vehicle code. Attorneys may also advise DUI suspects to not make any admissions to law enforcement without first speaking to a lawyer.