Grand Jury Indicts Driver
Ronald A. King Jr., 39, accused by East Hampton Town police of taking a single mother’s car on Memorial Day weekend and destroying it in a drunken crash, was indicted by a grand jury in Riverside Friday on multiple felony charges. The indictment was obtained with unusual speed by the county district attorney’s office, because under state law, he would have been released if not indicted by then. He remains in county jail and will be arraigned tomorrow in front of Justice Stephen L. Braslow in the Cromarty Court Complex in Riverside. Justice Breslow had sentenced Mr. King on at least three previous occasions, stemming from guilty pleas on felony charges of driving while high on drugs.
As reported last week, Carmen Moreno of Sag Harbor, the owner of the car, a 2005 Jeep Cherokee, had dropped off the vehicle in front of a mechanic’s house on Three Mile Harbor Road on the night of May 28. Mr. King, an acquaintance of the mechanic, is alleged to have taken the car without permission and driven it down Three Mile Harbor-Hog Creek Road as far as Manor Lane. There, police said, the Jeep ran over a street sign, knocked down a utility pole, and hit a tree. The vehicle was left a twisted wreck, out of which, witnesses said, he climbed, bloody and dazed, trying to flee on foot before being arrested. “It’s my friend’s car,” he allegedly said. “He probably doesn’t know I took it. I had a bit to drink.”
Without transportation, Ms. Moreno, the mother of a 2-month-old, missed more than a week of work at Staples in Bridgehampton. On Tuesday, however, her fiancé helped her obtain a 1999 Mercedes. They became engaged after the incident.
The indictment includes a D felony charge of drunken driving, unauthorized use of a car, a misdemeanor, and leaving the scene of an accident. Also included are two felony charges of unlicensed driving stemming from arrests in East Hampton in 2013.
East Hampton Town Police Chief Michael Sarlo explained last week that Mr. King had been charged with unauthorized use of the Jeep, a misdemeanor, rather than grand theft auto, a felony, because he did not take the car with the intent of depriving Ms. Moreno of her property. According to Robert Clifford, a spokesman for the district attorney, the destruction of the Jeep would qualify for a felony charge of criminal mischief only if Mr. King had intended to destroy it.
Mr. King had first been sentenced by Justice Braslow in 2013 to a three-year conditional discharge. After being charged that year with another felony, he was sentenced to several years on probation. However, in 2015, Justice Braslow issued a warrant for his arrest alleging he had violated the terms of probation. This time he was sentenced to six months in jail.