By Donovan Slack
The Boston Globe
BOSTON — A Boston firefighter was charged with drunken driving, speeding, and negligence after a car crash Sunday seriously injured another driver in West Roxbury.
Vernon Tiger Allen, 43, pleaded not guilty to the charges in West Roxbury District Court yesterday and was released on his own recognizance.
Police say Allen was driving between 45 and 50 miles per hour on VFW Parkway when his vehicle broadsided an Acura sedan at the corner of Baker Street at about 2:30 a.m. An on-scene breath analysis test indicated Allen’s blood-alcohol content was .14, according to a police report. The legal limit to drive in Massachusetts is .08.
Allen, a Boston firefighter since 1989, told state troopers at the scene that he had finished working a shift two hours earlier and had gone out with friends and had drunk two beers, the police report says. Fire officials said yesterday that Allen had finished work 10 hours earlier.
The driver of the Acura - Ryan Surprenant, 27, of Madison, Conn. - was trapped in his car for some time before he could be transported to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he was in critical condition yesterday, authorities said. Surprenant, a sales associate at a financial services company and onetime standout basketball player at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, could also face charges of drunken driving and running a red light, said the Suffolk district attorney’s office.
Allen’s arrest comes amid a bitter contract dispute between city officials and the Boston Firefighters Union over random drug and alcohol testing of firefighters. The city wants testing but the union has refused to agree without receiving in return a significant boost in pay or benefits. The controversy was spurred by autopsy results last year that indicated that one firefighter was drunk and another had cocaine in his system when they died in a West Roxbury fire.
Fire officials said that Allen, who suffered minor injuries, is scheduled to visit the department doctor today to determine when he can return to work. Allen also will be required to participate in a substance abuse treatment program sponsored by the department. During the one-year program, Allen will be randomly tested for drugs and alcohol. He is due back in court Nov. 7 for a pretrial conference.
Copyright 2008, The Boston Globe