Drove Car Onto Sidewalk

A driver who was talking on his cellphone Saturday night and wound up on the sidewalk on Newtown Lane has been charged with felony driving while intoxicated. The charge is at the felony level, East Hampton Village police said, because Scott Edward Stern of East Hampton, 35, has been convicted of drunken driving within the past 10 years, in 2011 in a Nassau County court. 

At police headquarters on Cedar Street, Mr. Stern submitted to a breath test, which reportedly produced a reading of .27, well in excess of the .18 figure that raises a D.W.I. charge to the more serious aggravated level.

Represented by Colin Astarita, who entered a denial to the felony charge, Mr. Stern was arraigned in East Hampton Town Justice Court Sunday morning before Justice Lisa R. Rana. Seated in the courtroom were his parents and brother, who had driven that morning from Bay Hills Beach in Huntington, where they live.

Justice Rana noted that besides his previous D.W.I. conviction, also at the aggravated level, Mr. Stern has several other criminal convictions. Twice, she said as she was deciding whether to grant the district attorney’s request that bail be set at $20,000, he was convicted of attempted petty larceny, and once of grand larceny, which brought him a sentence of 30 days in jail and five years’ probation. “He has been put in jail on several occasions, and on probation on several occasions,” she said. “He also has a warrant history.”

“I’m probably not going to be handling your case,” Justice Rana told the defendant, explaining that should he be indicted on the felony charge the case would be handled in county court. “You can’t afford to get into any other issues.” She set bail at $5,000, which was posted.

East Hampton Town police also made an arrest last week on a felony drunken-driving charge. Katherine E. Mahoney, who turns 26 today, was driving a 2014 Hyundai Elantra on Montauk Highway early last Thursday morning when she turned onto Spring Close Highway in East Hampton without signaling, police said, leading to a traffic stop. She refused to take the breath test at headquarters. 

Ms. Mahoney, who lives in Springs but has a Georgia driver’s license, was arrested in June 2015 for misdemeanor D.W.I. and pleaded guilty two months later before Justice Steven Tekulsky. That case was expedited, apparently to allow her to return to school in Georgia. 

Justice Tekulsky was again on the bench when she was arraigned later last Thursday morning. “I took a chance on you and issued you a conditional discharge,” he said. “I am, to say the least, not happy to see you here again.” Besides the felony D.W.I. charge, she faces a misdemeanor charge of driving without a breath-testing interlock device, which the court required as part of the 2015 sentence. Her attorney, Trevor Darrell, entered a not-guilty plea on the misdemeanor and moving violations Friday, and a denial to the felony. Her case, too, will be moved to county court if an indictment is obtained. 

Town police arrested Jacqueline Albright-Kehoe early Friday morning, saying they had clocked her 2004 Jeep at 48 miles per hour on Cedar Street, where the speed limit is 30. She has no history of arrests; her breath test reportedly registered .09, just over the .08 mark that defines intoxication. Justice Tekulsky released her without bail, but with a future date on his criminal calendar.