Woman jailed again for OUI

BELFAST – A woman who served prison time for driving drunk when she struck and killed a 16-year-old boy in 1998 is again behind bars for drunken driving.

Gale Chapman didn’t stop seven years ago after striking Ethan Barton while he was riding a bike on the Empire Road in Poland.

Chapman, who told police she thought she hit a deer, was sentenced to 18 months for leaving the scene of an accident and drunken driving.

After completing her sentence, Chapman changed her name to Shannon Ross and moved to Belfast. Ross is now in the Waldo County Jail serving a six-month sentence for operating under the influence.

Ross, 44, was stopped by Belfast police on March 2 for driving erratically. Police found a water bottle in the car half full of vodka or some other clear liquor, Officer Michael McFadden said.

She had a blood-alcohol content of 0.31 percent, nearly four times the 0.08 percent legal limit.

Waldo County Assistant District Attorney Eric Walker portrayed Ross as an alcoholic with a dangerously high tolerance for liquor. As he gathered facts on the arrest, “I got chills in my spine,” Walker said. “Every OUI is serious, but this is an amazing case.”

Ross pleaded guilty in May and was sentenced to 364 days in jail with all but six months suspended. She declined to be interviewed or offer any statement.

A second OUI conviction usually results in a seven-day sentence, but Walker said he asked for a stiffer sentence because of her past, which also included an alcohol-related incident last September when Belfast police responded to a complaint of a drunken worker at a Jiffy Lube.

In his sentencing request, Walker told the judge that an officer found Ross drunk on the job, although she wasn’t arrested because she had broken no laws. Police also found a water bottle at the site filled with a clear liquor.

Suzanne Barton, the mother of Ethan Barton, said she was surprised and disappointed that the woman responsible for her son’s death had again been drinking and driving.

Barton said she had imagined that after Ethan’s death, the woman would not drink and drive again.

“Now I feel foolish to have been so idealistic to think she would turn over a new leaf. I’m disappointed,” she said.

Ross is the second Mainer to recently be charged with OUI after previously being convicted of striking and killing somebody while driving drunk.

Daniel Asselin, 38, of Bangor, pleaded guilty this month to operating after revocation and operating under the influence of intoxicants.

In 1996, Asselin was driving with a blood-alcohol content of 0.21 percent when he struck and fatally injured Mark Blanchette, 18, on Webster Street in Lewiston.

Initially charged with manslaughter, Asselin pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of aggravated drunken driving and served four years in prison.

When he was stopped in Bangor last year for allegedly squealing his tires and drifting over the centerline, he had a blood-alcohol content of 0.29 percent.