Driver who hit pole, caused power outage is charged with DUI
WOONSOCKET – A Warwick man was charged with drunk driving after a utility pole crash that dropped live power lines onto another vehicle Friday and resulted in a brief but widespread power outage.
Brian N. Magnussen, 42, of 36 Vanderbilt Road, was driving a Ford pickup truck near the U.S. Post Office on Social Street shortly after 7 p.m. when he apparently lost control of the vehicle and slammed into a utility pole, knocking it down.
The crash caused live power lines to drop across a Toyota traveling behind the pickup. An adult female driver and two juveniles were trapped inside for about 20 minutes while police waited for crews from National Grid to cut power to the lines. All escaped without injury, but about 10,000 National Grid customers in the city lost power for about a half hour.
Officer Gregory Klocek said Magnussen’s eyes were bloodshot and he smelled of alcohol when he approached him after the crash. Magnussen told police he was tired from working all day in Norfolk, Mass., and couldn’t explain how the crash happened.
After a field sobriety test, police said Magnussen registered a BAC of .179 on a preliminary breath test, or more than two times the legal limit
for driving.
Magnussen told Klocek he’d had a couple of beers after work, but following his arrest, officers found four empty nip bottles of 100-proof vodka in his truck. A fifth nip bottle had been opened and still had some vodka in it, and
another was unopened.
Magnussen suffered a laceration on his head in the crash, but he refused transportation to the hospital and declined to be treated by paramedics from the Woonsocket Fire Department, police said.
He was released from police custody on a summons about 11:20 p.m. Friday.