Drunk Alaska Man Steals Forklift, Drives Three Miles To Retrieve Truck

A 21-year-old drunk man, Aleksandr Glushko, crashed his father’s truck in Alaska. To recover the truck, he came up with a plan: steal a forklift to get it out of there. He nearly got away with it too.

According to the Daily Mail, the incident started in the early morning on Monday. Glushko, who had a blood-alcohol level of 0.230 when arrested, crashed his father’s truck into a stack of pipes left in a company yard. He left the truck immobilized, left on one of the pipes with one tire missing.

Then, Glushko decided to solve his problem in a unique way: steal a forklift to take the truck out.

The New York Daily News reports that he walked to George Horner Ice Park, stole the forklift, and began to drive away. He drove for three miles down the road, then looped back to retrieve his truck. Unfortunately for the forklift thief, an Alaska Railroad worker spotted him and called the police. Lt. Matt Soden of the Fairbanks Police Department described the situation to the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.

“Police were on scene talking to the railroad worker when Mr. Glushko came driving back up on the forklift.”

Glushko was reportedly cooperative and took a breathalyzer test that measured his blood-alcohol level at 0.230, about three times the standard for intoxication.

He was arrested on charges of vehicle theft and felony DUI. He already received two previous DUIs.

Driving a stolen forklift drunk is already pretty bad, but what about a Zamboni?

As previously reported by the Inquisitr, one Zamboni driver was caught driving drunk by dozens of spectators at a high school girls hockey game. The people in the stands claimed the driver was weaving about erratically. Eventually, one school employee called the police.

The driver was intoxicated and received a DUI. The case was unusual, in that the driver was charged despite not being on a public road. The law in Minnesota stipulates that anyone operating a motor vehicle while under the influence can be arrested.

The Zamboni and forklift drunk drivers are strange cases, but drunk driving, in general, is not.

According to Mother’s Against Drunk Driving (MADD), 29.1 million people admitted to driving under the influence in 2012, a population roughly the size of the population of Texas, and most drunk drivers get away with it at first. MADD reports that on average a person will drive intoxicated 80 times before their first arrest.

Of course, stealing a forklift, like the Alaska man above, will speed up the arrest time significantly.

[Image via Fairbanks Police Department, Max Lambert/Getty Images]