Cops find gun after drunken man falls in the street

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

A man who was found Wednesday lying in the street drunk also had a handgun in his van, reports said.

Joseph Masson, 56, of Winchester Avenue, is in the Mahoning County jail on charges of operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol or drugs and having weapons while intoxicated. He is expected to be arraigned in municipal court today.

Officers Assad Chaibi and Kevin Bokesch were called about 2 p.m. to the 1900 block of Concord Avenue on the West Side for a report of a man who fell out of a van and was lying in the street drunk.

When they arrived, they found a man later identified as Masson in the driver’s seat of a van with his head against the steering wheel.

Reports said the motor was running and when the officers told him to put the van in park, Masson instead put it in drive. Reports said Masson had a cut on his head and blood on his hands but said he was not injured.

He ignored police orders to get out of the van until an officer opened the door, but Masson had to be helped out because he appeared to be very drunk and was unsteady on his feet, reports said. Reports said his breath smelled heavily of alcohol, and he also urinated on himself.

A woman on the street told police she saw Masson fall out of the van and when he did, she went over to help him get back inside the van. He then pulled a handgun once inside the van and tried to hand it to the woman, but she gave it back to him, reports said.

Masson asked her to get in the van with him before he passed out, and she left to call police, reports said.

In the van, police found a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun that had an empty clip, another empty clip in a case and an open wine bottle.

Reports said Masson was not cooperating when officers tried to give him a field-sobriety test and paramedics injected him twice with different drugs to get him to calm down. He was taken to St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital, where he also was unruly toward staff there.

He passed out, woke up, agreed to take a blood test, then refused, but blood was drawn anyway, reports said. Reports said preliminary tests show his blood-alcohol content at 0.360. In Ohio, a person is considered to be driving drunk if the BAC is 0.08.

Masson was held at the hospital until his blood-alcohol level lowered, then he was booked into the jail.

The gun, along with another gun seized later in the day, gives police 23 guns seized for the year and three this week.