Lies, DUIs; airline passengers and a good-cop/bad-cop in one.
Alcoholic passengers of the month:
Two women, Lilia Ratmanski, 25, and Milana Muzikante, 26, who went to the lavatory and consumed a “significant quantity of their duty-free alcohol purchase,” lit a cigarette, got into a physical altercation with each other and made a “threat against the aircraft” on a Sunwing flight from Toronto to Cuba. NORAD scrambled two CF-18 fighter jets to escort the flight back to Toronto. Assuming the women won’t be able to shoulder the cost of fuel, salaries and inconvenience to Sunwing, NORAD and the passengers, the costs alcoholics impose on the rest of us are incredible.
Alcoholic hero-villain of the month:
NYPD Officer Eugene Donnelly, 27, pleading innocent to having allegedly battered a 30-year-old woman after going out on the town celebrating receipt of a Police Combat Cross—the department’s second highest honor—for stopping a gunman while he was off-duty. The four-year veteran crashed at a friend’s and, at some point, wandered out of the residence wearing only his briefs. He wound up in another apartment in the same building and encountered the woman, who had never seen him before. He allegedly punched her twenty to thirty times, at one point saying, “I’m a good guy, but sometimes I’m a bad guy.” He may as well have said, “Sometimes I’m Dr. Jekyll, and sometimes I’m Mr. Hyde.”
Alcoholic sportsman of the month:
Abdiel Toribio, 42, was observed driving a vehicle with long-expired (2007) tags and pulled over. When he couldn’t find paperwork proving the vehicle belonged to him, the officer, a sheriff’s deputy, let it be known he was going to make an arrest. Toribio was going to have none of that and drove off—with the deputy partly inside the vehicle. After slowly pulling himself into the car, the deputy convinced Toribio, who had numerous priors, to stop and face new charges, including resisting an officer with violence and driving while license is suspended or revoked for DUI. Toribio is a horse jockey with career earnings of nearly $27 million in purse money and close to 10,000 starts, so he too could be considered a hero—and a villain.
Alcoholic untruth of the month:
Lawrence Goetzman, 30, rolled his SUV on an interstate ramp and, landing right-side up on its tires, drove away. Officers found a debris field of broken glass, clothes, tools and paperwork on the ramp, along with skid marks and red paint from a vehicle on the road. When officers tracked him down at the hospital, with a laceration under his left eye and blood all over his face and clothes, he greeted them with, “Oh, (expletive).” Goetzman told police he had fallen down the stairs at his house and hit some bricks. Police charged him with DUI, driving without a valid license and failure to maintain control of his vehicle. He also qualified for the next category:
DUI of the month:
Elias Velez-Morales, 24, who was, among other charges, arrested for DUI, while “dancing” on the seat of an International 354 tractor on a city street near Vero Beach, Florida. He registered a .24 percent blood alcohol level. He not only reeked of alcohol, but also of urine because he peed on himself and, in an apparent attempt to dry out, had his pants down when he was arrested. There are plenty of partially clothed alkies, but a partially clothed DUI is rare.