43
Man arraigned for sixth OVI
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
A Salt Springs Road man was arraigned Tuesday in municipal court on his sixth OVI charge.
Vincent Tuchek, 46, also was arraigned on charges of resisting arrest and aggravated menacing after he was arrested about 10:40 p.m. Friday in the 1100 block of Salt Springs Road. Judge Robert Milich set his bond at $35,000.
The OVI charge is a felony. Under Ohio law, a person can be charged with a felony if they have six OVIs within a 20-year period.
Police were called to Salt Springs Road Friday on a report of an accident, and when they arrived, they found Tuchek holding a 24-ounce can of beer next to a vehicle that was in a driveway, reports said.
An officer asked Tuchek to come with him because he wanted to question him about the accident, and Tuchek immediately began swearing at and threatening the officers, city Prosecutor Dana Lantz said at Tuchek’s video arraignment.
“He basically gave everyone from the officers to the hospital staff to the deputies at the jail a hard time,” Lantz said.
Reports said Tuchek smelled heavily of alcohol but refused to take a field-sobriety test. When police tried to take him into custody, he refused to be cuffed and was taken to the ground to be cuffed, reports said.
At the police station, Tuchek also refused to take a blood-alcohol test before he was taken to the county jail, where he spent the weekend before his arraignment. He was taken to St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital to be examined before he was booked into the jail.
Through the lawyer who represents clients at video arraignments, Walter Ritchie, Tuchek said he did not understand how he could be charged with OVI if the vehicle he was supposed to be driving was in the driveway and his girlfriend was the driver.
Lantz said witnesses at the scene said Tuchek was the driver involved in the accident.
Court records show Tuchek had OVIs in 2001 in Mahoning County Area Court and municipal court, respectively, both of them with a designation that his blood alcohol content was above 0.17. The threshold in Ohio to be found guilty of driving drunk is a BAC of 0.08 or higher. He also had an OVI with the BAC specification in 2004 in Trumbull County Eastern District Court. He was found guilty there and sentenced to 180 days in jail with 120 days suspended.
Records also show that Tuchek had OVIs in county court in Austintiown in 2011, 2012 and 2016. In all of his Mahoning County court cases, Tuchek also refused BAC tests, and he was placed on probation in all of those cases and given suspended sentences. Sentencing records for his municipal court conviction were not immediately available.
In July 2015, Tuchek was found guilty in Warren Municipal Court of OVI and leaving the scene of an accident and was sentenced to 90 days in jail and five years’ probation.
Court records also show that in 1988, Tuchek, 17 at the time, was one of three people charged with the beating death of a 29-year-old Forest View Drive man. He was bound over to Mahoning County Common Pleas Court as an adult and was sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison on a charge of involuntary manslaughter. Court records do not show when he was released.