Roadside fracas in Saratoga Springs leads to arrests

PHOTOGRAPHER: Justin Mason

If you’re wanted in connection with a bottle heist from a local liquor store, it’s probably not a good idea to be with an alleged drunken motorist in a car filled with quarreling backseat drivers.

City police said they arrested a South Glens Falls woman for drunken driving and then apprehended one of her passengers suspected of stealing $53 in liquor, after they happened upon a fracas involving five people on the shoulder of Ballston Avenue early Thursday evening.

City police Lt. Robert Jillson said officers were returning from a trip to the Saratoga County jail when they happened upon the group wrestling on the roadside.

“The cops just rolled up on it,” he said.

Apparently, some of the passengers in 18-year-old Shaniah Sanders’ 2000 Honda Accord weren’t happy with her driving. Jillson said the argument that started in the car proceeded to the roadside near the bustling intersection with West Fenlon.

“Someone wasn’t happy with the way she was driving,” he said.

And perhaps that was because Sanders was allegedly drunk. A roadside test showed her blood alcohol content to be above the 0.08 threshold to legally drive.

Sanders was arrested on the misdemeanor charges of driving while intoxicated and driving with a BAC over 0.08 percent. Meanwhile, other officers arriving on the scene recognized a woman among the five from a surveillance video taken from East Side Wine & Spirits several hours earlier.

The video showed a woman absconding with bottles of Goldschläger and Midnight Moonshine in her black purse. Ashley S. Sanders, 23 of Hudson Falls, was initially charged with petty larceny.

But she allegedly gave police a bogus identity, so they lodged a misdemeanor count of false impersonation against her as well. The elder Sanders was arraigned in city court and remanded to the Saratoga County Jail in lieu of $1,000 cash bail or $2,000 bond.

The younger Sanders was released on an appearance ticket and is scheduled in City Court at a later date.