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Officers responding to a call of an erratic driver found Patrick DiCola, 50, out cold behind the wheel of a 1987 Chevy Blazer parked on the sidewalk and partially in the station entrance, Detective Sgt. Matthew Hoogmoed said.
The motor was still running, he said.
“It took several attempts for officers to awake the driver,” who, Hoogmoed said, “kept falling asleep mid-conversation.”
DiCola said he’d taken heroin and a sleeping pill at some point during the day before driving, the sergeant said.
Police found more than five dozen envelopes of heroin – five of them loose and the rest tied into bundles, he said.
They brought DiCola to headquarters, where a drug recognition expert determined that he was under the influence of heroin,” Hoogmoed said.
Asked to provide a urine sample, DiCola “appeared to scoop water from the toilet and advise the officer that it was his urine sample.”
Police charged him with tampering with evidence, drug possession and being under the influence of drugs before releasing DiCola pending court action.
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