S. Main Street crash results in DUI charge for driver
WOONSOCKET –A North Smithfield woman thought she was trapped in her vehicle after she crashed into a utility pole on South Main Street early Monday, but she was wrong.
Heather D. Cook, who was later charged with driving un- der the influence, apparently didn’t realize her doors were locked.
“I asked Heather to unlock the door and she replied that the door was broken from the accident and she couldn’t get
out,” Officer Evan Puopolo reported.
Puopolo was thinking
about smashing one of the windows to unlock the door, but Cook, despite being squeezed in by the airbags that deployed in the crash, managed to unroll one. At that point, Puopolo reached
in and unlocked the door.
Cook, 40, of 67 Woonsocket Hill Road, slammed into a utility pole near
566 South Main
St., about 1:18 a.m. Monday. The crash caused heavy frontend damage to the 2018 Subaru she was driving, but Cook appears to have been unharmed. Police said she declined medical attention.
When Puopolo first arrived on the scene, Cook, sitting inside the crumpled vehicle as smoke wafted from the engine block, asked him to go away.
“I asked the female if she was okay and she replied, ‘I’m all set, you can leave,’” Puopolo reported.
Cook said she’d been drinking Jameson whiskey at the Doll House on Front Street before she crashed. She apologized for drinking and driving, but she allegedly refused to allow police to sample her breath.
In addition to driving under the influence, BAC unknown, police charged her with refusing to submit to a breath test – a Traffic Tribunal citation.