Charges: Drunk Driver 'Just Trying To Get Home'
HASTINGS, Minn. (WCCO) -- An Inver Grove Heights, Minn. man was arrested and charged with driving while intoxicated.
A Dakota County Sheriff's deputy was called to the area of 200th Street and Goodwin Avenue on Jan. 28 after a woman said she stopped for a man's welfare.
She had seen a man standing in the roadway and felt sorry for him. It appeared he had driven his truck into the ditch.
When a deputy arrived, 37-year-old Anthony Paul Braun approached, swaying while walking, looking disheveled and attempting to smoke a cigarette backwards in his mouth. He asked the deputy for a match.
The deputy noted the strong smell of alcohol, and saw Braun's boots and the seat of his pants were both wet.
Whenever asked how his truck got into the ditch, Braun told the deputy that he was "just trying to get home."
He was taken into custody and, upon arrival at Dakota County Jail, refused to consent to sobriety tests, which included stopping in the middle of breath tests.
Braun has been charged with first-degree counts of driving while impaired and refusing to submit to an implied consent test. Both are felonies.
The criminal complaint states Braun has been convicted on alcohol-related traffic counts in 1998, 1999, 2003 and 2007.
