State trooper escapes injury when squad is hit by drunken driver

The State Patrol's crackdown led to 33 arrests.

By JIM ADAMS and TIM HARLOW, Star Tribune s taff writers

Last update: November 27, 2009 - 8:40 AM

A Minnesota state trooper narrowly escaped injury early Thanksgiving morning when his squad car was hit by a drunken driver while he was arresting another impaired motorist near Rochester.

An assisting trooper chased and arrested the second driver, a 25-year-old woman from Rochester, said patrol spokesman Capt. Matthew Langer. The woman, who has a prior DWI conviction, was being held Thursday in the Olmsted County jail.

Trooper Sam Catlin was in his squad car when the woman sideswiped him at 3:14 a.m.; he wasn't hurt, Langer said. He said Catlin had just pulled over a northbound motorist on Hwy. 52, north of Rochester.

The two arrests were among 33 drunken-driving arrests that the patrol made during a statewide DWI crackdown between 6 p.m. Wednesday and 10 a.m. Thursday. Thanksgiving Eve and Day are among the most deadly holiday periods, the patrol said. The enhanced DWI patrols will continue around the state through the weekend, Langer said.

He added that the 33 arrests were less than he expected for Thanksgiving Eve, one of the busiest nights for DWIs. He said perhaps the low tally was "an indicator that people made good decisions and didn't get behind the wheel after drinking."

Officers issuing traffic citations get hit "more often than we'd like," Langer said Thursday. "It illustrates that troopers aren't immune from the dangers of drunk driving. Other motorists are at risk and troopers are equally at risk, if not more so, because they are actively out there stopping cars when we know that drunk drivers are on the road."

Langer noted that at least two of the seven Thanksgiving injury crashes involved alcohol and people not wearing seat belts. "It's frustrating when we see people ejected and injured simply because they decided not to wear their seat belts," Langer said.

He noted that nearly 80 percent of people in alcohol-related crashes are not belted. That compares to about half of motorists who are not belted in nonimpaired crashes, he said.

In the past five years, a total of 154 alcohol-related crashes have occurred on Minnesota roads during Thanksgiving Eve and Day. Six people were killed, matching New Year's for the fourth-highest total among two-day holiday periods, behind St. Patrick's Day, July 4th and Memorial Day.

The number of drunken-driving arrests also has been substantial, averaging 291 for the two-day Thanksgiving period during those five years, compared with an average of 196 for any two-day period last year.

The two alcohol-related crashes Wednesday night and Thursday morning both involved unbelted motorists in roll-overs on Hwy. 169 in the Lake Mille Lacs area. An Edina woman, 43, was critically injured when the car in which she was a passenger swerved to avoid a deer and crashed near Aitkin. The 65-year-old man driving had less serious injuries.

The other crash involved a couple from Lexington, whose vehicle rolled over north of Milaca. The couple, in their early 20s, were airlifted to North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale, where they were in critical condition Thursday night, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Jim Adams • 612-673-7658 Tim Harlow • 612-673-7768