A  44-year-old resident of Paw Paw was recently arrested by a Kalamazoo Sheriff’s Deputy while delivering the newspaper. But it wasn’t the fact that he was delivering the paper that caused the deputy to pull him over, rather it was that he was driving on a road that had been temporarily closed due to an accident.

According to the arresting officer, Deputy Brian Matthews, the arrest took place on a Thursday afternoon in Paw Paw Township. He was at the scene of a car crash, when a second vehicle drove right through the crash scene. Following the driver, the deputy pulled him over and discovered that there was open alcohol in the man’s car, and he was apparently intoxicated.

A breathalyzer revealed that his blood alcohol level was five and a half times the state’s legal limit of .08, meaning that he was well beyond what Michigan law labels “super drunk”. Using simple math, assuming that the BAC levels reported by numerous media sources were correct, it is easy to determine that the man’s blood alcohol content was above 0.4. According to information released by the University of Rochester on the progressive effects of alcohol on the human body, the symptoms of this particular category (0.4 and above) are listed as “unconsciousness and death”.

According to court records, this is not the first time this particular man has encountered law enforcement when it comes to drinking and driving. He has been convicted on three prior occasions for DUIs, which means that he is likely to be charged as a habitual offender.

He is currently being held at the Van Buren County Jail, where he will remain until he is arraigned and possibly granted bond. However, it is worth noting that some Judges do not look kindly on those with repeated convictions for drunk driving and sometimes deny them bail. In those instances where bail is granted, it is often conditional bail, which means that defendants will be required to abstain from alcohol consumption and may also lose their driver’s licenses.