By Kim Bell
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
FLORISSANT — Florissant police say a chronic drunken driver involved in a crash last weekend has been arrested for his 13th DWI. And now that the man is free from jail after posting bail, police say they have new reason to be frustrated.
“This is a problem,” said an exasperated Florissant Officer Craig DeHart on Thursday. He said police see too many repeat drunken drivers back out on the street.
“We lock these guys up ... and it seems like they are back out,” DeHart added.
Owen R. Tross Jr., 60, of the 1100 block of Lindsay Lane in Florissant, was charged Saturday with driving while intoxicated and driving with a revoked license, both felonies. He was arrested Friday after pulling into traffic and hitting a car at the intersection of Washington and St. Ferdinand streets in Florissant. No one was hurt in the crash.
Police say Tross has 12 prior arrests for DWI, at least two of those in Florissant. On his last one, he got an eight-year prison sentence and served a little than two years of it. He is on probation and has had his driver’s license taken away.
He has not have a valid driver’s license since 1984, said Ashley Mason, administrative analyst with the Missouri Department of Revenue. He’s been told he can’t even reapply for a license again until 2022, she said. She said she found 11 alcohol-related convictions for Tross in Missouri, dating back to 1985. Three of those convictions were felonies. He also has nine convictions for driving while suspended, revoked or denied.
A St. Louis County jail supervisor in Clayton said Tross was released from jail after posting bond Monday. He posted a $98,953.16 property bond and $1,046.84 cash. His next court date is set for June 8 before Associate Circuit Judge John N. Borbonus. There were no special conditions of bail.
Tross couldn’t be reached Thursday, and the lawyer who has represented him on several previous DWI cases did not return a phone call. DeHart said officers are fully aware he’s back in Florissant but can’t do much more than their aggressive DWI patrols, saturation efforts paid with grant money.
“Short of parking outside his home, what can we do?” he said. “We really don’t have the resources for that, for one individual driver.”
According to court records, the most recent conviction for DWI was in 2012. He was arrested by Florissant police in October 2012 and charged with DWI as a persistent offender.
Tross pleaded guilty in November 2012 in St. Louis County Circuit Court. Judge John Warner gave him an eight-year sentence, in connection with another DWI case from 2008, but the file indicates he was released after serving “shock incarceration” of two years. Another court file notation says he had to get long-term treatment for chronic nonviolent offenders with serious abuse addictions.
Tross is currently on probation, according to the Missouri Department of Corrections.
When he was arrested in 2012, one of bail conditions set by Judge Judy Preddy Draper was that he not drink and be fitted with an ankle monitoring device within 72 hours of his release. He was allowed to post $5,000 of his $50,000 bail.
There are no such special conditions for bail this time, according to an online court record and confirmed by a docket clerk.
His prior convictions for DWI include two in Hazelwood, in 1998 and 2005, and two in Florissant, in 1999 and 2008.
DeHart said police go through the proper channels when they catch the drunken drivers. So who, in his opinion, is dropping the ball?
“The county keeps issuing the warrants on him, so it’s not the prosecutor’s office,” DeHart said. “So it must in the process after the warrants are issued, whoever is deciding to do the sentencing or releasing him early.”
Warner, the judge in the 2012 case, had “no comment” on the issue, his clerk told a Post-Dispatch reporter on Thursday.
A Missouri Department of Corrections’ spokesman, David Owen, said Tross first came to prison for a 120-day shock sentence in 1999. His probation was revoked in 2003, and he spent about five more months in prison. He violated parole in 2005 and went back to prison for 21 months. He was released on parole again in August 2007.
Then, in December of 2012, he was ordered to undergo long-term treatment after he got caught in another DWI, and he was put back on probation the last time in October 2014, Owen said.