Crime

A case of déjà vu? Thurston County Sheriff posts ‘bizarre’ DUI arrest that happened twice

A man was arrested for driving under the influence twice, once on Feb. 16 and again on Feb. 17, at the same intersection near Pattison Lake.
A man was arrested for driving under the influence twice, once on Feb. 16 and again on Feb. 17, at the same intersection near Pattison Lake. TCSO

Thurston County Sheriff Derek Sanders posted on his social media Feb. 19 about a DUI arrest he said was one of the most bizarre cases he’d seen.

Sanders said TCSO deputies arrested the same man two nights in a row for DUI, at the exact same time of day, in the same car, at the exact same intersection.

Both arrests happened on 58th Avenue Southeast, near Pattison Lake. On Feb. 16 at 10:18 p.m. deputies responded to a collision at the intersection of 58th and Jon Court Southeast. A caller had reported a man crashed into her parked car and appeared drunk.

Deputies arrived on scene and conducted Standardized Field Sobriety Testing. The man was subsequently arrested for DUI and blew a 0.31, nearly four times the legal limit. He was arrested and booked into jail, then released the following day.

The next day at nearly the same time — 10:05 p.m., according to jail logs — the same two deputies were dispatched to the same intersection where the same man crashed into a yard and struck a tree stump.

Deputies arrived and conducted SFSTs again, and placed the man under arrest. He blew a breath sample of 0.30.

Sanders said bail for the man was set at $50,000 the second time.

“This scenario is so statistically unlikely it’s got me stuck in my head,” Sanders said. “I don’t know if this has ever happened in the history of modern policing before.”

Ty Vinson
The Olympian
Ty Vinson covers the City of Olympia and keeps tabs on Tumwater and other communities in Thurston County. He joined The Olympian in 2021. Before that, he earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism at Indiana University. In college, he worked as an intern at the Northwest Indiana Times, the Oregonian and the Arizona Republic as a Pulliam Fellow. Support my work with a digital subscription
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