Impaired driver waved down police

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This article was published 18/11/2011 (5414 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A drunk driver recently made it really easy for police to catch him — he was nabbed when he hopped out of his vehicle and flagged officers down to make a complaint.

“It’s highly unusual that an impaired driver would wave down police and alert them to another matter,” defence lawyer Ryan Fawcett noted in Brandon court on Thursday.

Keith Whitecloud, 58, who also goes by the name Keith Casey Rattlesnake, pleaded guilty to impaired driving for the Oct. 16 incident.

Crown attorney Marycia Sieklicki said police were following a van as it headed north on 10th Street when it stopped at a red light.

At that point, the driver got out of the van and approached the stopped police vehicle to make a complaint about a previous disturbance.

However, police could smell liquor on the driver’s breath, he failed a roadside test and officers determined he was at about three times the legal blood-alcohol limit.

Fawcett said Whitecloud initially waved down police to complain that his grandson had been intimidating him and family members. The victim of previous assaults at his grandson’s hands, he was trying to get away from his grandson at the time he was drunk driving.

Whitecloud has three previous, although dated, convictions for impaired driving.

Judge Krystyna Tarwid said that Whitecloud faced the possibility of going to jail but, given the circumstances and the dated record, she fined him $3,000 and banned him from driving for two years instead.

Whitecloud should have called police to deal with his grandson or left on foot instead of driving, Tarwid advised.

Police did look into his report, noted Whitecloud, who added that his grandson is currently in jail.

» ihitchen@brandonsun.com