McDonald man faces ninth OVI

Staff report

AUSTINTOWN

A McDonald man is charged with his ninth citation for operating a vehicle impaired.

A township patrolman found Steven L. Queen, 58, of Clearfield Street, asleep at the wheel just after 12:30 a.m. Friday.

Queen’s vehicle was stationary across the median of the Meridian Road off-ramp but still in-gear, the report states. Another patrolman braced his vehicle against the front of Queen’s before they woke him.

Upon waking and seeing the officers, Queen sped forward, running into the patrol vehicle, according to the report. After smelling alcohol coming from the vehicle, officers asked him to take field-sobriety tests, which he ultimately refused.

Police found a half-empty bottle of liquor in the driver-side door panel, according to the report.

As Queen had eight prior OVI convictions – the most recent a felony count in Portage County – he was later made to submit to a blood test, the results from which are not included in the report.

Queen is set for arraignment on a felony OVI charge Monday in Mahoning County Area Court.

Canfield Police Department assistant Chief Scott Weamer, who also coordinates the Mahoning County OVI Task Force, said Queen’s charge is a third-degree felony, and all of his offenses were committed within the past 20 years.

In OVI enforcement training, officers are taught though only a small fraction of motorists on the road at any given time are impaired, the number of impaired drivers caught by cops is much smaller, he said.

“For someone to get nine OVIs, they have probably driven a vehicle impaired thousands of times to get caught nine times by law enforcement – that’s the odds; that’s statistics,” he said. “There’s more impaired drivers out there than we end up making contact with.”

The task force recently obtained full OVI enforcement funding from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, $225,000, to coordinate drunken-driving checkpoints and increase OVI patrols this year.