WINONA Minn. – At first it seemed an open-and-shut case of drunken driving. Shortly after a driver clipped a corner of a garage in an alley on the West End, police stopped his unmistakably red PT Cruiser with a crumpled fender. The driver climbed out clutching a battle of liquor and a case beer and admitted to four or five beers. Things got complicated at the jailhouse. As officers were preparing for a blood draw for data on his blood-alcohol level, Daniel Lee Decker, 59, collapsed on the floor wincing in back pain. Lying prostrate eased the pain, he said. An ambulance took him across town to the hospital. Police left him there and went back to the jailhouse to start their paperwork. There was the hit and run. Decker had admitted driving off, albeit, he said, with the intention of calling in the accident later. Then there was the matter of the matter of the garage in the alley behind the 50 block of Carimona Street. it was still standing but would need repair. Then there was the drunken driving. Decker had admitted to downing a few beers, to which police had ample evidence in his body odor and bloodshot eyes – and the booze he was clutching, not to mention that he failed an on-site field sobriety test. This was all in a half-hour period or so starting about 11:45 on an otherwise tranquil Sunday morning.
