A Stockton Springs man suspected of shoplifting and wanted on several warrants fled from police into the woods along outer Union Street in Bangor early Friday morning, but was captured later when he tried to complete his getaway in a cab.

Shawn Ashworth, 26, was arrested on four warrants and also was charged with failure to give a correct name after a police officer reported Ashworth tried to pass himself off as someone else.

Bangor police officers were alerted about 8:30 p.m. Thursday that a suspect in a theft at the J.C. Penney store had fled in a 1985 white Chevrolet station wagon. Later that night, about 11:45 p.m., Officer Brent Beaulieu spotted the station wagon headed out on Union Street. But by the time he turned his cruiser around, the station wagon was gone.

It was located, abandoned, outside a residence at 1621 Union St. Taking a look around, Beaulieu could hear the crunching sounds of footsteps in snow as well as snapping twigs in the woods behind the house. He radioed for a K-9 Unit, but after searching the area for quite a while, the effort had to be called off because of the deep snow. The station wagon was towed.

Ashworth wasn’t out of the woods. The Police Department received a call about 1:30 a.m. Friday from another Union Street resident who reported that a man was banging on her door, claiming his car had died and that he needed a cab.

En route to the home, Beaulieu learned that a taxicab was also on its way to the home. The officer waited for it to pick up its passenger and drive back down Union Street before stopping it and confronting the passenger who was hiding in the back seat. Ashworth initially claimed he was his brother Marty Ashworth. Beaulieu ran a record check and found that Marty’s eyes were hazel and that Shawn had brown eyes. Ashworth attributed his apparent eye-color change to drug use.

When he was patted down, police found a hypodermic needle in Ashworth’s pocket.

A picture of Shawn Ashworth was brought over to Beaulieu and matched the man the officer had stopped.

Two of the warrants were for failure to pay fines, another warrant was for unlawful possession of scheduled drugs and the fourth one was for forgery.

A Bangor woman called police to report that her estranged husband had called her Thursday night, drunk and angry, and told her he was headed over.

Officer Steve Jordan went to the home at 99 Husson Ave. and waited for half an hour for the Holden man to show up in a green pickup truck, but he didn’t. As Jordan was leaving, the pickup truck passed him and Jordan turned around and went back to the house.

The pickup truck was there, but no driver visible. Jordan followed footprints in the snow around to the back of the residence. Dispatch reported to the officer that the man was now inside the home and Jordan found the rear door broken open and a wet footprint on the door, near the doorknob.

The door led to the garage. Inside, Jordan called for the man to come back and talk to him and explain what he was doing in the home. James Brown, 41, told Jordan that his wife had taken some of his furniture and that he was getting it back.

Jordan could smell the strong odor of alcohol coming from Brown and reported that the man’s eyes were glassy and that he swayed while talking to the officer. Jordan performed a field sobriety test on Brown and, confirming his suspicions, arrested Brown.

Brown had a conditional license that prohibited him from drinking at all and driving, prompting Jordan to charge Brown with operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicants and operating a motor vehicle without a license. He was charged with criminal mischief for the damage to the door.

A Bangor woman reported that one of her guests partying at her apartment Tuesday night assaulted her after she told him to leave.

The woman said that Harry Dyer, 51, grabbed her by the throat, scratched her chest, stomped on her foot and then pushed her into a wall, reported Bangor police Officer Russell Twaddell. Dyer denied everything but the pushing, saying he did that because the woman blocked his way after she told him to leave.

Another man reportedly had to pull Dyer off of the woman during the altercation, according to the police report. Dyer was summoned on a charge of assault.

– Compiled by NEWS reporter Doug Kesseli