LEWISTON — A woman dragged by a car through downtown streets last week had been seeking painkillers, police said.
In an affidavit, Detective Joey Brown wrote that a 53-year-old woman had sent a text message on Wednesday morning to Daniel Chamberland, 28, of 195 Lincoln St. in an effort to buy opioids.
Chamberland drove her from her apartment to a variety store on Horton Street so she could retrieve the $100 in cash she planned to give to him in exchange for low-dose Percocet, an opiate medication. Chamberland waited for her, parked outside the market in his girlfriend’s black Hyundai sedan.
She told police she reached into the car with her cash and Chamberland responded by handing her a prescription bottle full of pills she “knew immediately were not Percocets,” Brown wrote.
Daniel Chamberland
She threw the bottle on the floor of the car and demanded her money back, she told police. Chamberland refused. He began to drive away while the woman’s upper body was still in the car. She told police she hung on to the car in an effort to retrieve her cash. She finally let go and fell in the roadway, according to Brown’s affidavit.
The woman had first told police Chamberland had tried to steal her pocketbook, but changed her story during a second interview, after police had talked to more witnesses, Brown wrote.
Street surveillance cameras in the area showed the car parked in front of the variety store at roughly 8:30 a.m. Wednesday. The woman walked from the market directly to the car that Chamberland had been driving, according to the affidavit.
A minute later, she was shown still leaning into the front passenger window as the car pulled away from its parking spot. The woman’s legs left the ground, Brown wrote.
“After traveling a short distance, the vehicle stops and (the woman) is able to put her feet back on the ground. (Her) arms are still inside the vehicle, but her head can be seen outside of the vehicle,” Brown wrote in his affidavit.
“The vehicle takes off again with Powell hanging off the side of the vehicle. The vehicle drives around the (front-end) loader (parked on the side of the street) and the vehicle is no longer in the camera’s view. When the vehicle returns in the view of the camera, (the woman) is seen falling off the side of the vehicle,” Brown wrote.
The woman was taken to Central Maine Medical Center where she was treated for cuts on her hands and lacerations on the side of her body. She complained of neck and back pain and underwent a CT scan.
The woman, who referred to the car’s driver and drug dealer only as “Danny Boy,” was unable to identify Chamberland in a photo lineup, Brown wrote in his affidavit.
The photo police showed to her featured a bald-faced Chamberland wearing eye glasses. The woman described “Danny Boy” as wearing black frame glasses and having a “tight, clean shaven beard,” the affidavit said.
Chamberland appeared in 8th District Court on Friday where a judge set bail at $1,500 cash or $500 cash plus a supervised release contract.
He was charged with reckless conduct with a dangerous weapon, a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. He also was charged with driving to endanger, a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and unlawful trafficking of scheduled drugs, a misdemeanor punishable by up to 364 days in jail.
If Chamberland posts bail, he is barred from having alcohol and illegal drugs, and dangerous weapons, and could be searched at random for them.
He must have no contact with the woman or a passenger in his car at the time of the incident.
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