YAKIMA — Yakima police didn’t have to go far to arrest a suspected drunken driver Sunday night.
The suspect, according to court documents, battered through a fence at the police department’s parking lot and rammed a police motorcycle inside a secure entry to the city jail.
A Yakima police officer was in his patrol car in the parking lot on the west side of the department’s headquarters, 200 S. Third St., around 6:40 p.m. Sunday when he heard a crunching at the parking lot gate, according to a probable cause affidavit.
A 2000 Honda Accord rammed open the gate, knocking it from its tracks and rail, the affidavit said. Once inside the parking lot, the Accord went to the building’s secure vehicle entrance, and when the door automatically opened, the car sped inside and hit a YPD motorcycle parked there, the affidavit said.
The car then backed up and made another run, and the officer ordered the car’s driver, identified as Jose Guadalupe Mendez, 53, of Yakima, out of the car. Mendez complied, but while on the ground made obscene gestures at the officer and swore at him, the affidavit said.
Officers smelled intoxicants on Mendez, the affidavit said, and found three empty bottles of Coors Light in the front passenger seat and an ice chest in the back with ice in it. Mendez refused to perform field sobriety tests or to blow into a portable breathalyzer, the affidavit said.
Mendez, the affidavit said, also gave officers two false names.
He was booked into the Yakima County jail on suspicion of first-degree malicious mischief, first-degree criminal trespass, driving under the influence and providing false statements to police.
At his preliminary appearance hearing in Yakima County Superior Court Monday, Judge Elisabeth Tutsch ordered him detained and set bail at $15,000.
