K9 Tracks Driver Who Ran Away After Southeast Crash

SOUTHEAST, NY — A Good Samaritan called an ambulance after a midnight crash on Starr Ridge Road. She told the victim — who promptly ran away, Putnam County Sheriff Robert L. Langley Jr. reports.

Now the driver, a Brewster man, faces charges of Driving While Intoxicated and Leaving the Scene of an Accident.

At 12:22 a.m. Jan. 18 Deputy Francis McDonough responded to the area of 186 Starr Ridge Road, in the Town of Southeast, on a report of a one-car motor vehicle accident. McDonough found a 2013 Honda Civic crashed into a stone wall at the intersection of Starr Ridge Road and Cobb Road.

He observed that the airbags inside the vehicle had been deployed but the driver was not in the car.

A witness, who lived across the street from the accident scene, informed McDonough that the driver, who reeked of an alcoholic beverage, fled the scene on foot after she told him that she had called an ambulance.

The witness gave a physical description of the driver and told McDonough which way the man had gone.

Sergeant Timothy Keith of the Putnam County K-9 unit, who was on Patrol with his canine partner Sentinel, responded to the scene to assist Deputy McDonough.

Sentinel was able to track the driver, who was later identified as 26-year-old Brewster resident Cody
Holliday, to the vicinity of 214 Starr Ridge Road.