Police arrested a 39-year-old Stamford man before dawn last Thursday after finding him passed out drunk behind the wheel of a running motor vehicle on Ponus Ridge.
Awoken by police, the man passed a fake ID and gave his own brother’s name instead of his own—a ruse that was discovered when that same brother went to NCPD to pick him up—and so he was charged with criminal impersonation, second-degree forger and interfering with an officer in addition to driving under the influence.
It started around 3:23 a.m. on Dec. 10, when an officer on patrol saw a car parked in the northbound lane on Ponus Ridge near Hawks Hill Road, facing southbound with its lights on, according to a police report.
Approaching, the officer saw that the driver was asleep and that the car was running and in gear, the report said.
The officer knocked on the window and, in speaking with the driver, smelled alcohol, the report said. The driver failed field sobriety tests and later submitted to a urine test whose results are not yet in, the report said.
The man had passed an ID with the first name ‘Ronald’ at the scene, but police later found out that Ronald was in fact his brother, when Ronald himself came to headquarters to collect his brother and identified himself, the report said.
The arrested man additionally had signed his paper work at headquarters as ‘Ronald,’ the report said.
He additionally was cited for operating under suspension and failure to drive in the established lane, police said. The man later told police he gave the wrong information because he was under federal probation for a drug arrest and didn’t want to make his situation worse, the report said.
He was released on $265 bond and scheduled to appear Dec. 21 in state Superior Court in Norwalk.