Offender’s jail sentenced lengthened for drunk driving

A Springfield inmate had his jail sentence lengthened this week by another 4-to-18 months after he pleaded guilty to a felony count of drunken driving in connection with a crash into a ditch that occurred back in February.

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Published July 25, 2016 in the Rutland Herald Offender’s jail sentenced lengthened for drunk driving By ERIC FRANCIS WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — A Springfield inmate had his jail sentence lengthened this week by another 4-to-18 months after he pleaded guilty to a felony count of drunken driving in connection with a crash into a ditch that occurred back in February. Aaron Fitzgerald, 25, of Springfield is currently serving a sentence for grand larceny because of the theft of a pickup from a driveway in West Rutland that he confessed to having stolen in September of 2014. During the hearing this week Fitzgerald’s public defender, Attorney Dan Stevens, told the court that his client would have already been paroled had it not been for the unresolved drunken driving charge hanging over his head. “He’s really gotten jammed up for this,” Stevens told the court. In 2014, the stolen truck was recovered largely undamaged the next day in Ludlow but Fitzgerald picked up additional charges in the months that followed. A year ago he pleaded “no contest” to charges of second-degree aggravated domestic assault and unlawful trespass for forcing his way into a Cavendish woman’s apartment and tossing her around in front of her 2-year-old. Fitzgerald had already completed a seven-month sentence for those convictions when the drunken driving crash earlier this year in Springfield landed him back in trouble. On the evening of Feb. 9, several Springfield Police officers responded to the intersection of Elm Hill and Brook Road and reported finding a black Jeep Cherokee lying on its side in a ditch. Fitzgerald was found a short distance away walking from the scene and initially denying that he had been the driver. “He kept saying that his vehicle was parked further up the road at his residence,” Springfield Police Cpl. Michael Gilderdale wrote in his affidavit, noting that Fitzgerald’s speech was slurred and he was “swaying while standing” as the officers questioned him. Crystal Sargent, who had been the lone passenger, told police that the Jeep belonged to her. “She advised that Fitzgerald was driving the vehicle because she had asked him to (drive it because) the throttle was sticking and he knew how to fix it,” Gilderdale wrote, noting that one of the witnesses who stopped to help the couple out of the wreck recalled that “when they opened the door (of the Jeep) all (the witness) could smell was pot.” Gilderdale wrote that although Fitzgerald refused to take a roadside breath test he appeared to officers to be “substantially intoxicated” and four empty Twisted Tea containers were found in the overturned Jeep.