LEBANON — A Dartmouth College student has pleaded guilty to drunk driving and other charges in connection with a wrong-way driving incident on Interstate 89 last month and on Wednesday morning was released from county jail where he had been held for six weeks.
Aneesh Sharma, a junior from Weston, Fla., has been held at Grafton County jail since he was arrested on April 15 for allegedly speeding in the wrong direction on Interstate 89 and nearly colliding with an oncoming police vehicle.
Escorted by a sheriff’s deputy and wearing red prison fatigues, Sharma pleaded guilty to misdemeanor counts of driving while intoxicated, disobeying a police officer and reckless conduct on Tuesday in Lebanon District Court.
A felony count of reckless conduct with a deadly weapon was dismissed.
Judge Michael Mace sentenced Sharma, 21, to nine months in Grafton County House of Corrections, with seven months suspended. A negotiated plea deal gives Sharma credit for the 43 days he has been held in pretrial confinement at the North Haverhill facility. He was released on Wednesday morning, according to court records.
He will be on probation for two years.
Sharma, whose LinkedIn profile identified him as a statistics major and “director of game management” for the football team, is not currently enrolled at Dartmouth, a college spokesperson said on Monday.
On his bail order, he listed his address as 30 North Main St. in Hanover, which is the address of the Gamma Delta Chi fraternity.
On Wednesday morning an officer of the fraternity who declined to give his full name said it was “unfortunate what happened” and that Sharma “was going to live here but now he can’t,” declining further comment.
The events that led to Sharma spending weeks behind bars began when Lebanon police were notified on April 15 at 12:32 a.m. of a wrong-way driver on Interstate 89, according to a police affidavit filed in court to support the charges against Sharma.
Initially, the responding police officer was under the belief that the wrong-way vehicle was traveling northbound on I-89 South and entered the highway at Exit 19 in Lebanon, heading north to Exit 20 in West Lebanon in order to observe traffic in the southbound lane.
But suddenly “a pair of headlights became apparent in (the officer’s northbound lane) coming head on with his fully marked police cruiser,” according to the affidavit.
The officer “quickly applied his brakes and conducted an evasive maneuver to his right to avoid a high-speed, head-on collision which likely would have caused serious bodily injury” while the wrong-way vehicle continued speeding southbound on I-89 North toward Exit 19.
Doing a U-turn at a turnaround near Exit 20, the officer now chased with his cruiser lights flashing southbound on I-89 in pursuit of Sharma, who had stopped his vehicle in the grassy median just south of Exit 18, for Route 120. As the officer stepped out of his cruiser and approached the vehicle, Sharma took off again continuing southbound in the northbound lanes at a speed exceeding 80 miles per hour, police said.
As Sharma approached Exit 17, for Route 4, he slowed down and police cruisers — other units had by now been called in — were able to pull up alongside Sharma’s vehicle. But he then accelerated to continue driving southbound in the northbound lane before stopping for the second time.
One of the police cruisers giving chase then turned around at Exit 16 in Enfield to head back in the northbound lane to where Sharma had stopped — only for Sharma to turn his car around and begin heading back north in the northbound lane.
The police cruiser, with lights flashing and sirens wailing, was able to pull up behind Sharma’s vehicle — identified as a silver Lexus ES330 with
New Hampshire tags — which finally complied and pulled over into the left side median of I-89, stopping a third time.
Two police officers approached Sharma’s car and told him to get out, but “the male operator did not exit the vehicle,” the police affidavit said.
One of the officers then opened the driver’s side door and “removed” Sharma from his car, putting him on the ground and handcuffing him “without further incident.”
The arresting officers said they observed Sharma had “bloodshot and glassy eyes” and detected a “strong odor of alcohol” on his breath.
He was also “wearing two completely different shoes on his feet,” police noticed.
Once back at the Lebanon police station for booking, Sharma refused to complete requested physical tests, a blood draw or sign paperwork, police said. He requested to call his father, a Boca Raton, Fla., radiation oncologist.
Sharma was later transported to Grafton County jail, where he was held from April 15 until Wednesday morning.
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
