Brownsburg Fire Chief Resigns Following Drunk Driving Arrest

POLICE MAY HAVE BOTCHED BLOOD EVIDENCE
The chief of the Brownsburg Fire Department tendered his resignation today following his arrest last weekend in downtown Indianapolis on drunk driving charges. William Brown crashed a department-issued SUV into a construction site at the intersection of St. Clair, Mass Ave and College Streets on Sunday night after leaving the Forty Five Degrees restaurant/bar on Mass Ave. The Brownsburg Fire Territory Board earlier this week suspended Brown, 58, without pay while it continued to investigate the incident.

Brown's resignation came just hours after he made his first appearance in court following the filing of formal charges against him, including two misdemeanor charges of operating a vehicle while intoxicated and endangering a person and operating a vehicle with an alcohol concentration of greater than .15%. A probable cause affidavit released to the media today sheds more light on the circumstances of Brown's crash indicating significant damage to Brown's department-issued vehicle. It also raises questions about whether police may have botched the handling of Brown's blood evidence.

According to the probable cause affidavit, police were dispatched to the intersection of Mass Ave and College Ave. after receiving a call that a white SUV had crashed into a construction site near the intersection where a credit union for the firefighters union is being built. Police arrived to find the fence enclosing the construction site had been run down at the southwest corner of Mass Ave and St. Clair Streets and a large fuel tank on the site had been knocked over. Police followed the vehicle tracks to a parking lot on the north side of the construction site where they discovered another fence run down. Police discovered Brown's vehicle in that parking lot where it appeared to have been driven in reverse at a high rate of speed, striking a limestone rock wall and coming to rest on top of the tracks of a mini excavator the SUV had struck.

Police observed Brown as the sole occupant of the vehicle. He was trying to get the engine to fire when police approached him and asked him to exit the vehicle. Brown initially ignored their request, whereupon a police officer reached into the driver's side door and removed the keys from the ignition. The responding officers said Brown was slurring his words and observed the smell of alcohol on his breath. Police helped Brown from the vehicle, who had difficulty steadying himself without their assistance. At one point, he identified himself as a Brownsburg fireman. He declined to take a breathalyzer test or answer questions about whether had been drinking. Brown told police he was on his way home when he crashed his vehicle after leaving Forty Five Degrees, which is located across the street from the construction site.

A juvenile approached police and told police she witnessed the crash and that Brown was the vehicle's sole occupant. The owner of Forty Five Degrees, Bill Pritt, also approached police after Brown had been transported to Eskenazi Hospital to draw blood for evidence upon obtaining a warrant. Pritt asked police if Brown had been the driver of the vehicle. Pritt then proceeded to tell police that Brown had been in his bar. "He was pretty hammered when he came in here but he ordered food too and we served him a few drinks," Pritt told police. When asked what he was drinking, Pritt said Brown had been served vodka and cranberry juice. Pritt also volunteered that Brown had run up a $68 tab before leaving. It seems kind of odd that Pritt would go out of his way to volunteer evidence of a patron he had just served more alcohol after saying he was "pretty hammered" when he arrived at his establishment. Fortunately, neither Brown nor any other persons were injured in the crash.

The probable cause affidavit indicates two samples of Brown's blood was drawn by an RN at Eskenazi Hospital, one placed in a glass vial and the other in a plastic vial. After the police transported the blood evidence to the property room, the police officer discovered the glass vial had broken and spilled inside the transport bag. "I returned to Eskenazi and put a new label on the remaining vial because the original label on the remaining plastic tube had been destroyed by the leaked blood," the officer wrote. "I then transported the single tube of blood to the property room and submitted it for ETOH testing." I'm not an expert in this area, but I suspect the mishandling and potential contamination of the blood evidence provides grist for Brown's attorney to challenge the blood test results by raising a chain of custody and reliability issues. Brown's recorded blood alcohol level was .259, more than three times the legal limit.