The man accused of stealing two cop cars and was wounded in a shootout with police kept nodding off during his first court appearance Wednesday.
Judge Andrew Robinson cut the hearing short and rescheduled it to Friday after 37-year-old Gary Porter appeared to keep nodding off and mumbled responses to Robinson’s questions, according to the Sun Journal.
Porter appeared in court via videoconference from the Oxford County Jail in South Paris.
Porter has been charged with theft, assault on a police officer, escape, eluding and violating his bail conditions, according to Shannon Moss, a spokesperson for the Maine Department of Public Safety.
Porter was arrested for an outstanding felony warrant about 7:18 a.m. Monday after the Paris Police Department received a report about a “suspicious male.”
He was taken to Stephen’s Memorial Hospital in Norway, where he was treated for conditions that Moss said were unrelated to his initial arrest.
Paris Police Chief Mike Dailey took Porter to the Oxford County Jail. But while Dailey attempted to remove him from the cruiser, Porter slipped his handcuffs from back to front, moved into the driver’s seat and stole the cruiser, according to Moss.
Dailey was thrown from the cruiser as he tried to keep Porter from fleeing.
Officers from the Norway, Oxford and Paris police departments, Cumberland County and Oxford County sheriff’s offices, the state fire marshal’s office and Maine State Police began pursuing Porter until he crashed on Route 117 in Paris.
It was there where Porter exchanged gunfire with police, according to Moss. In a video published by numerous media outlets, shows a man in a white hospital gown running from police, getting into another police cruiser and speeding off amid a barrage of gunfire. That video didn’t capture any shots fired by Porter.
Porter was wounded in the exchange of gunfire and crashed the Oxford County Sheriff’s Office cruiser a short ways up the road, according to Moss.
Porter was taken to a local hospital, where he was treated for his injuries. After he was released, Porter was taken to the Oxford County Jail.
In a Wednesday email to the Bangor Daily News, the Maine attorney general’s office identified the officers who shot at Porter as: Sgt. Dan Hanson and Trooper Tyler Nadeau of Maine State Police; Lt. Justin Brown and deputies Jeffrey Howe, Danielle Vienneau and William Nelson of the Oxford County Sheriff’s Office; Detective Gary Hill and Cpl. Robert Ferdico of the Norway Police Department; Sgt. Allen Coffin of the Paris Police Department; and Chief Rickie Jack and Officer Michael Rioux of the Oxford Police Department.
The officers have all been placed on administrative leave as the Maine attorney general’s office investigates, which is standard procedure any time a law enforcement officer in the state uses deadly force. The Maine State Police are conducting a criminal investigation.
