The province’s police watchdog is investigating Essex County OPP after a suspected drunk driver was injured early Wednesday when he allegedly crashed a car and resisted arrest.
“Our preliminary information is that the officers were responding to a single-vehicle collision,” said Jasbir Brar, spokeswoman for the Special Investigations Unit (SIU). “They attempted to arrest a 57-year-old man. There was an interaction during that process of arrest and the man was taken to Hotel-Dieu hospital.”
Essex County OPP responded to a crash at 3:18 a.m. Wednesday on County Road 46 west of Sexton Side Road in Tecumseh. Police said a 57-year-old man from Woodslee ran his vehicle off the road and struck a culvert.
When an officer tried to arrest the man for drunk driving, he resisted and had to be restrained, police said.
Brar said the man was treated for one serious but non-life threatening injury at the Windsor Regional Hospital’s Ouellette campus. She wouldn’t elaborate on the nature of the injury.
The OPP notified the SIU, which has invoked its mandate to investigate. The SIU is a civilian arm’s length agency that investigates incidents involving police that result in serious injury, death or sexual assault.
Brar said the SIU has three investigators and one forensics investigator looking into the incident. Part of the investigation will involve determining if the man’s injury came from the car crash or the subsequent arrest, she said.
The OPP said they are conducting a parallel investigation into the car crash.
twilhelm@windsorstar.com or Twitter @WinStarWilhelm
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