High Behind the Wheel

At 8:14 p.m. last Saturday, a 26-year-old Menomonee Falls man was arrested for operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated, second offense, after police responded to a call of a man slumped over the wheel of his car in a parking lot in the 12300 block of West North Avenue.

When police arrived, Fire Department paramedics were already there, and they had awakened the man, who had been asleep with the engine running. The man was “completely out of it and was staring out the window with a blank stare,” a paramedic told police.

The man had to be helped from his car and could not walk without stumbling, but officers and paramedics did not smell alcohol. He denied drinking or taking drugs and said he was just very tired, but he failed a sobriety test and refused a breath test.

When taken to Wisconsin Heart Hospital for a forced blood draw, though, he told the nurse, “You are going to find Valium and Percocet in my blood.”

While he was being booked, he repeatedly fell asleep. When he was searched, officers found two small plastic straws and two straight-edge razor blades with white powder on them.

When his parents came to pick him up, officers asked the man if he wanted them to explain what had happened. He said, “Go ahead, this is not the first time for me.”