Stonington man arrested after fray Pipes involved in Hersey Avenue brawl

A Stonington man was arrested Wednesday after a Bangor police officer responded to a report that two males and a female, all armed with pipes, engaged in a street fight on Hersey Avenue.

David Joyce, 31, was found sitting on the steps at a residence. He immediately began yelling that a man inside had hurt his wife, and that he intended to kill the man if he came back outside, according to Officer Kevin MacLaren’s police report. Joyce’s wife was sitting in a car nearby with a 1 1/2-foot-long tire iron.

Officer MacLaren went inside the residence where witnesses said Joyce had borrowed money from one of the residents and left his ring as collateral. That morning Joyce called them and said he would come collect the ring and kick the resident’s teeth in, the officer wrote.

Later that day, witnesses said, Joyce showed up, wielding a railroad spike, and yelled threats until the resident came down to the street. The two men wrestled until Joyce’s wife allegedly hit the resident with the tire iron. The resident retaliated, knocking her to the ground with an inch-thick piece of pipe, MacLaren wrote.

Joyce was arrested for criminal trespassing and was taken to Penobscot County Jail. The railroad spike and tire iron were collected as evidence.

The woman suffered minor injuries. The men were not injured.

A Newburgh woman was driving north on the Emerson Mill Road in Hampden Tuesday night when she heard what sounded like marbles hitting her pickup truck.

She also saw pellets whiz by, some of them hitting the windshield and chipping it, Hampden police Officer Ben Eyles reported Wednesday. The officer spoke with residents in the area, but none of them had heard any guns being fired and didn’t know of anyone who would have been out there with one, the officer said.

Eyles said he determined that a load of birdshot had apparently been fired from quite a distance but that it didn’t appear intentionally aimed at the pickup truck. “It wasn’t specifically fired at the truck. It was just by chance,” he said.

A Bangor man suspected of drunken driving early Wednesday morning told police that the reason he did so poorly on sobriety tests was because he was nervous but also because he learned the alphabet differently while he was in a New York gang.

Rubel J. Taveras, 18, insisted that he hadn’t been drinking when Bangor police Officer David Bushey pulled him over shortly before 1 a.m. The officer had him perform field tests, which Taveras failed. Taveras said he failed because he was too nervous, Bushey’s police report stated.

Bushey then asked him to write the alphabet, which Taveras also failed. Still, he maintained that he was sober and attributed his alphabet problems to his affiliation with a gang from his home state of New York, according to the officer’s report.

Taveras was arrested anyway, and when his blood alcohol level was tested later at the police station, it was more than twice the legal limit. He was charged with operating a motor vehicle under the influence of intoxicants.

– Compiled by BDN reporters Eric Russell, Doug Kesseli and Michael Hartwell