Lack of a windshield proved no barrier for a road warrior who drove from Georgia to Augusta, Maine.
Anh Mai, 25, of Norcross, Georgia, was arrested by Maine State Police Trooper Randy Hall just before midnight Thursday on Interstate 95 in Augusta on charges of failing to stop for an officer and operating an unsafe motor vehicle.
Mai pleaded guilty to those charges Friday and was sentenced to 12 hours in jail, which she already had served earlier in the day, and fined $200. She then was released.
By 4 p.m. Friday — after the court hearing — passing motorists reported a woman who was either “crying or praying” and walking in the breakdown lane along Interstate 95 near Western Avenue. Police who checked on the woman identified her as Mai, according to emergency radio transmissions, and it wasn’t clear what had happened to her.
In the original traffic stop Thursday night, Hall said he was in the passing lane in Gardiner when he saw a vehicle with Georgia plates “operating at a slow rate of speed with nobody else around,” according to an affidavit he filed at the Capital Judicial Center.
The trooper wrote that the driver failed to move into the proper lane when he flashed his lights, and then kept moving even when he turning on his emergency blue lights. The vehicle stopped at exit 112B in Augusta.
He said that after he secured the operator and the vehicle and read Miranda rights to Mai, “I asked her why the windshield was completely smashed out.”
He said Mai told him she had a crash in New Jersey. “It was revealed the crash happened in Georgia and she drove to New York before being stopped and had the vehicle towed,” Hall wrote. “She got the car out of impound and drove to Maine with the windshield smashed out. No destination in Maine. She stated she was just driving.”
Mai was seen during a hearing Friday at the Capital Judicial Center via video from the Kennebec County.
The prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney David Spencer, said he was concerned “for this young lady’s safety and want to make sure she gets this vehicle fixed before she gets back on the road.”
Justice William Stokes told her, “It’s very important that you get the windshield on the vehicle fixed because it’s a dangerous condition. It’s dangerous for you and for everyone else on the road.”
“OK, I got it,” she said after attorney Stephen Bourget, representing her as lawyer of the day, repeated the judge’s instruction.
Bourget also said he had recommended against her entering guilty pleas.
Betty Adams — 621-5631
Twitter: @betadams
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