Bangor driver hits tree near standpipe

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A Bangor man’s car crashed head-on into a tree Saturday night after failing to make a turn on Ohio Street near the Thomas Hill Standpipe.

The driver, Ricky J. Hendsbee, 19, was in fair condition at Eastern Maine Medical Center on Sunday night.

According to Bangor Police Department records, Hendsbee was heading out of town in his 1987 Chevrolet sedan when he reached the left-hand curve just beyond the Ohio Street Beverage & Redemption Center at about 10:30 p.m.

On the curve in the road just below The Hilltop School and Summit Park, Hendsbee’s car went off the road, through a snowbank, into the front yard of a house, then rammed into the hardwood tree.

According to the initial police report, Hendsbee was driving “at a high rate of speed,” too fast for the road conditions.

Two detectives who specialize in reconstructing traffic accidents are investigating the crash.

Hendsbee suffered multiple injuries to his head and upper body, according to the report. Despite the injuries, he was able to tell responding rescue personnel that he had been drinking, the report stated.

He was not wearing a seat belt at the time of the accident, according to the report.

Holden’s Fire and Highway departments joined forces to rescue two horses from inside a small barn that collapsed Saturday morning. The Brewer Fire Department assisted as well.

The roof ridgepole of a barn at 790 Eastern Ave. collapsed, apparently under the weight of snow, according to James Ellis, Holden’s fire chief.

Though the roof caved in, the barn’s walls remained standing, bowed outward, and were unstable, Ellis said.

The horses were inside, stuck in their stalls. One horse was standing. The other was lying in a triangular space formed by the collapsed roof, the floor and an upright exterior wall, Ellis said. Neither animal was pinned beneath the fallen roof.

To get the first horse out, all firefighters had to do was pry open the jammed stall door, the chief said.

To free the second horse was trickier. The Holden Highway Department used a loader to brace the exterior wall so it didn’t kick out and fall.

But because it would take sawing part of the roof away from near the animal, the rescue workers waited until a veterinarian called by the horses’ owner arrived, Ellis said.

The veterinarian sedated the horse. Once the animal was sedated, Ellis said, an electric saw and hand tools were used to cut away a section of the roof and one of the stall’s walls.

Under the direction of the veterinarian, the chief said, firefighters tugged the horse a distance, about equal to the length of the horse’s body, to a spot where it could stand up.

After the sedative wore off, the horse rose, apparently uninjured. It was taken into a pasture, where it immediately galloped over to join the other horse, Ellis said.

A University of Maine student was charged by Bangor police with assault after spitting on ambulance squad and emergency room personnel Friday night.

The incident started just after 9 p.m., when UMaine Public Safety officers were called to Gannett Hall on a complaint about a disorderly resident, according to Joe Carr, a spokesman for the university.

The officers found Adam Caras, 18, of Saco running and yelling in the hall. The officers did not think the offense rose to the level of a crime, so they referred the matter to the university’s student-conduct office, Carr said.

But because of Caras’ condition, the officers called an ambulance to take him to a hospital.

The University Volunteer Ambulance Corps took him to Eastern Maine Medical Center, where staff called the Bangor Police Department, which dispatched an officer.

According to the officer’s report, a nurse said that Caras had been brought in because he had been drinking excessively. The nurse also told the officer that Caras spat on her.

While on the stretcher in the ambulance, Caras had become belligerent, spitting on and swearing at the crew, according to the report.

The officer found that Caras had been “netted” by hospital personnel, who had put a face shield on him so that he couldn’t spit on anybody, according to the report.

The officer charged Caras with assault for the spitting, according to the report.

The spitting warranted an assault charge because assault is defined, in part, as offensive physical contact, according to the Bangor Police Department.

Wesley Gerrish, 25, was arrested by Old Town police and charged with domestic assault after knocking his girlfriend down Friday evening.

Gerrish, who lives at 22 Davis St. in Old Town, came home drunk and proceeded to break a coffee table. He then pushed his girlfriend in the chest, knocking her to the floor, according to Old Town police.

As well as being charged with assault, Gerrish was charged with violating his probation, according to the police.

He was being held Sunday in the Penobscot County Jail. He is scheduled to appear in court today to face the charges.

A man with a Kuwaiti driver’s license was arrested and charged with operating while under the influence after Bangor police officers watched his vehicle swerve and lurch through downtown.

According to the police report, officers were on duty in a cruiser parked in front of City Hall when about 1:20 a.m. Saturday when they saw a silver vehicle make a very wide turn from Franklin Street onto Harlow Street, swinging all the way over into the opposite lane before “slowly correcting.”

The officers followed the vehicle as it turned onto Central Street, watching it swerve from the right-hand turn lane into the center lane in front of Cadillac Mountain Sports. The vehicle jerked to a stop in the middle of the Central Street-Hammond Street-Maine Street intersection as the traffic lights blinked yellow.

At this point, the officers turned on the cruiser’s blue flashing lights and pulled the vehicle over in front of the New Moon Caf?.

The driver, Naser Alajmi, produced a Kuwaiti driver’s permit. The officers had him perform a field sobriety test and then took him to the station where a breath test revealed a blood alcohol content of 0.09 percent, a hair above the legal limit of 0.08 percent.

Alajmi was summoned for OUI. He is scheduled to appear in court on March 2 to face the charge.

– Compiled by NEWS reporter Gordon Bonin