Old Town police charged Donald Harry Gallant, 42, with domestic assault Thursday after his wife reported that he grabbed her arm during an argument and also prevented her from calling the police.

In addition to the assault, Gallant was charged with obstructing the report of a crime or injury.

Called to Lot No. 46 at the Sunrise Trailer Park shortly after 3 p.m., Officer Chris Hashey spoke to Gallant while Officer Seth Burnes spoke to the wife.

Gallant denied anything physical occurred between them during the fight except that he had ripped the phone out of his wife’s hands while she was trying to call her boss. But his wife told Burnes that Gallant had threatened to beat her up and when she tried to dial 911 he pulled the phone cord out of the wall. She managed to reconnect the cord and call the police.

Part of the incident was witnessed by their 7-year-old daughter who had arrived home about 45 minutes before police arrived. The girl said that during the fight, she saw her dad grab her mom.

A Corinth man who initially balked at Brewer police who asked what he had inside a metal tin, later handed it over to police, admitting it contained marijuana.

Police in Brewer stopped a car driven by 20-year-old Joshua Devault late Thursday night on Wilson Street by the Joshua Chamberlain Bridge after noticing something was wrong with the registration. Officer John Knappe said the month of the registration was scraped off, and it was learned that the car’s registration expired in February, two months after the inspection had expired. The car’s owner, who was a passenger in the vehicle at the time, said he didn’t have insurance.

Outside the vehicle, Knappe patted down Devault for weapons and discovered the breath mint tin in the man’s pocket. Devault refused to let Knappe open the tin, but later had a change of heart. When questioned later by Cpl. Jason Moffitt, Devault admitted that it contained marijuana. The tin contained a small plastic bag of marijuana as well as a marijuana roach and a small glass vial with a white powder residue on it, according to police.

Devault was summoned on a charge of possession of a usable amount of marijuana.

An Old Town police officer who stopped a speeder noticed something unusual inside the car: the shaft of a pen in the handle of the driver’s door.

At the end of the pen tube was a white powder residue, which Officer Chris Hashey reported was suggestive of possible drug use. Based on his experience and training, Hashey said, he knew that empty pen casings are sometimes used like straws to inhale crushed pills.

The driver Tobi A. Smith, 20, of Milford initially told Hashey that it was just a pen. But when Hashey pressed him further, asking whether if it was tested it would prove to be cocaine, Smith claimed it wasn’t cocaine, but likely Vicodin. He said he hadn’t used Vicodin in a while but had previously used the pen to snort it.

Hashey seized the pen and searched Smith and his truck, finding a marijuana pipe in the man’s left pants pocket and another pipe in the truck, underneath the passenger seat. Rolling papers were also found inside the vehicle along with a glass jar that smelled of marijuana, and a pack of firecrackers.

Smith was issued a citation for speeding, doing 60 mph in a 45 mph zone and charged with possession of drug paraphernalia.

– Compiled by NEWS reporter Doug Kesseli