WELLS, Maine — A Massachusetts man was arrested early Saturday morning after his vehicle collided with a parked Wells Police Department cruiser, flipping it over and injuring the two officers inside.
Maine State Police received reports of an erratic operator driving south on Interstate 95 at about 2:30 a.m., according to a news release issued Saturday by Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman Stephen McCausland. Trooper Kristy Libritz responded from Mile 7 in York and requested that Wells police watch for the vehicle. The trooper met the Wells Police officers at the crossover at mile 16.5, he wrote.
A tractor-trailer driver, who was following the erratic vehicle, was updating the police with its location.
“As the erratic vehicle approached, both police units could see it weaving all over the road,” McCausland wrote. “Then it suddenly veered into the median crossover and collided with the Wells cruiser, causing the cruiser to overturn. The impact caused the Wells cruiser to roll over and land in the passing lane on the northbound side of I-95.”
The other vehicle, a 2006 BMW driven by Anthony Menici, 33, of Charlestown, Massachusetts, crashed into the median guardrail, McCausland wrote. Officers Dylan McNally, 21, and Thomas Kinney, 27, of the Wells Police Department were treated at the scene for minor injuries. Menici was brought to Southern Maine Health Care in Biddeford for treatment of numerous injuries, according to police reports.
He was charged with operating under the influence, driving to endanger and possession of Suboxone. The BMW and the Wells Cruiser, a 2013 Dodge Charger, were demolished in the crash.