Dog feces lead police to suspect

The suspect’s shoes were covered in evidence.

RALEIGH NEWS & OBSERVER

DURHAM, N.C. — Police found a man accused of drunkenly driving into a yard by following a trail left after he walked away through droppings left by the resident’s dogs.

Police say Josue Herrios-Coronilla, 18, was drunk when he left his apartment and drove his black Camaro on the wrong side of the road, all the way into the front yard of Bill McDonald’s house.

It was 11 p.m. Monday, and Bill McDonald was asleep.

“My daughter came running into the room and said, ‘Dad, there are headlights right outside my window.’”

McDonald called police, and when they arrived, they saw felled fencing, crushed bushes and the inoperable car. The driver was gone.

Luckily for police, two of McDonald’s four dogs — a Great Pyrenees named Comet and a chow named Snowball — use the yard as their dumping grounds.

And when the driver stepped out of his car, he left a fresh shoe print in a pile of droppings and an odoriferous trail down the street, said Durham police Sgt. Dale Gunter.

Gunter followed the path and stopped a white van driving toward him, asking the passenger, Herrios-Coronilla, to get out. The officer smelled his breath. He smelled alcohol.

Then, he looked at the man’s shoes. They were covered in evidence.

A breath test showed Herrios-Coronilla had a blood-alcohol level of 0.11, Gunter said.

The legal limit is 0.08. He was charged with driving while impaired and drinking underage, and was released from the Durham County jail on $1,500 bail. Efforts to reach him failed.

Though McDonald’s yard is torn up, he said he’s glad that no one was hurt — and that his dogs weren’t frolicking in the yard when the crash occurred.

The canines appeared oblivious to the good their well-placed doo did.