SABATTUS – Police pursued suspects fleeing a fight in three vehicles early Wednesday with worries that someone had a gun, but they found no firearm or serious injuries.
A call to police came in at about 8:30 a.m., stating that a fight was in progress at 23 Glenview Drive and that guns were involved.
“There was a frantic call made,” said police officer Gilbert R. Turcotte, the case’s primary investigator.
Officer Luke Gross took the call and responded to three vehicles fleeing on Crowley Road and heading toward Lewiston. With Turcotte and officer Kathy Irazzary following in a cruiser, Gross pulled over a pickup truck and two cars. Turcotte conducted a felony stop 300 yards short of the Village Store, he said.
Police called out three females and six males and made them lie down on the pavement, he said. Police then handcuffed them for safety purposes, Turcotte said.
“Everyone got patted down,” he said. “The vehicles were searched. No weapons were found.”
The suspects, ages 16 to 45 and all from Lewiston, were detained and brought to the Sabattus Police Department for interviews, police said.
The consensus of those interviews was that about a year ago an altercation ensued over a $20 debt owed by Andy Silva of Lewiston to a 17-year old male Sabattus resident, police said.
On Tuesday night, Silva went with friends to Glenview Drive to pay the alleged debt and a fight ensued, police said. On Wednesday, the Lewiston group returned to the Glenview Drive residence in an attempt to get a ring that was allegedly stolen from one of the Lewiston residents Tuesday night and another fight took place, they said.
“No one’s seriously hurt,” Turcotte said, adding that one kid got a swollen nose from a punch on Tuesday and one young lady complained of bumps on her head.
Three Lewiston police officers and two Androscoggin County deputy sheriffs assisted Sabattus police at the scene, he said. A state trooper with a police dog tried to track a person who may have fled from the Glenview Drive residence on foot, Turcotte said. “We’re still trying to ascertain if there was such a person,” he said.
Turcotte said he saw a black flashlight in one of the cars that from a distance might look like the barrel of a pistol.
“In the excitement and the frenzy witnesses probably mistook it for a weapon,” he said. Police searched each vehicle twice and scoured the sides of the roads, but did not find any firearms, Turcotte said.
No arrests were made, but the investigation of the case is ongoing, he said.
“We have a pile of statements we’re going through,” said Sabattus Police Chief Thomas Fales Sr., who helped police follow up at Glenview Drive after the stop was made.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
