Two Pa. Deputies, Officer Injured at DUI Detail

Two Berks County deputy sheriffs and a Wyomissing police officer were injured over the weekend when a suspected drunken driver crashed his pickup truck into a DUI checkpoint in Sinking Spring, authorities said Sunday.

Deputy Sheriffs Michael Gring and Andrew R. Hivner and Wyomissing Officer Douglass Goeltz were treated in Reading Hospital for minor injuries after the crash early Saturday, Sinking Spring police Chief James R. Oxenreider said.

The driver, a 29-year-old Sinking Spring man, also was treated in the hospital for minor injuries, the chief said.

Oxenreider did not release the man's name because no charges had been fi led pending the results of an investigation, including a blood-alcohol test.

"We're trying to discourage people from drinking and driving, that's why we have these DUI checkpoints," Oxenreider said. "It was an unfortunate situation."

Police from Sinking Spring and Wyomissing, and Exeter and Spring townships, working with the North Central Regional DUI Enforcement Program, organized the checkpoint in the 1100 block of Penn Avenue.

Police set up signs and lights in the area to alert drivers to the checkpoint, Oxenreider said.

He gave this account:

The westbound pickup truck drove past the DUI checkpoint signs at a high speed about 1:30 a.m. and hit the back of a sheriff 's department van parked on Penn Avenue.

Hivner was in the driver's seat of the van, which had just taken a DUI suspect to the courthouse, and Gring was a passenger. Both were wearing seat belts.

The truck then hit Goeltz, who was standing at the checkpoint. He was thrown into another parked van.

The sheriff's department van sustained minor damage. Police didn't know if the man driving the pickup truck wore a seat belt.

Officers said they smelled alcohol inside the truck.

Police closed Penn Avenue in the area until about 5 a.m.

McClatchy-Tribune News Service