Fifth Arrest in Six Months After Crash
The owner of the house in which an East Hampton teenager overdosed last month was arrested last Thursday on unrelated charges. It has been alleged that the young man’s condition was ignored for the next 12 hours.
Jefferson Davis Eames, who owns the house at 151 Neck Path in Springs where Jordan Johnson, 18, overdosed on Jan. 29, was arrested as he was appearing in East Hampton Town Justice Court in answer to numerous charges stemming from previous arrests, all within the last few months. Town police said they had checked video footage of a Feb. 7 incident in the parking lot of Barnes Country Market in Springs, showing a vehicle leaving the lot after striking another car, and determined that Mr. Eames was the driver of the vehicle, who fled. He is to be arraigned on the latest charge today.
Mr. Eames’s teenage daughter was picked up by Suffolk County Child Protective Services on Friday night, according to a source who requested anonymity but said the girl’s mother had told her of it. In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Mr. Eames himself wrote that his daughter “is in a girls’ home. I’m trying to get her out.” Local parents allege the girl organized the party at which Mr. Johnson overdosed. His right side remains paralyzed, the result of a condition known as toxic leukoencephalopathy.
His mother, Christine Moran, said Tuesday that the drug responsible was morphine. In addition to the paralysis, Mr. Johnson has lost motor skills throughout his body, she said. He is at the Rusk Rehabilitation Institute at New York University-Langone Medical Center in Manhattan.
A three-hour fund-raiser in support of his rehabilitation, which his mother said could take six months or longer, is to be held at the Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett on March 19. Ms. Moran described his progress to date as “awesome.”
Mr. Eames’s recent string of arrests began on Sept. 22, when he was charged with operating an uninsured, unregistered vehicle. On Nov. 22, he was charged with D.W.A.I., driving with ability impaired by drugs, as well as unlicensed driving. Twelve days later, he was hit with another misdemeanor charge of unlicensed driving. Then, on New Year’s Day, the same officer who arrested him on the drug-related charge reportedly spotted him driving again. Knowing his license was suspended, she tried to pull him over, but he sped off, police said, leading to a pursuit at speeds of up to 90 miles per hour. He was charged in the end with fleeing a police officer, unlicensed driving, and reckless driving, along with at least two dozen moving violations.
Other charges against Mr. Eames remain open in Riverhead Town Justice Court, where they were moved after both East Hampton justices recused themselves. That case alleges crimes stemming from a 2015 road rage incident that involved the wife of an East Hampton town police officer.
Mr. Eames, in turn, has sued both the town and the police in federal court, alleging violations of his constitutional rights stemming from that arrest, as well as an earlier one also involving road rage. The federal case will likely not be heard until the Riverhead case is decided.