May 27, 2022 4 min read

A state trooper is accused of drunken driving after he was allegedly found by a fellow trooper to be intoxicated while on patrol with a bottle of rum in the front seat of his police SUV.

Jared Clyde Johnson is the second state police trooper from the Washington County barracks since September to be charged with DUI in a state-issued vehicle after he was arrested earlier this month while in uniform and on patrol in western Washington County.

State police investigators said Johnson was working the afternoon shift on May 12 about 4:45 p.m. when he was dispatched from the city of Washington for a report of an injured deer on Interstate 70 near the Claysville exit. About 20 minutes later, he used an onboard computer to mark his location at the scene and then radioed to the state police dispatcher that the deer was gone upon his arrival.

However, the dispatcher struggled to understand Johnson as he spoke, while also noticing that the GPS tracker on the patrol SUV showed his location just off the Taylorstown exit several miles away from the scene, according to court documents. The dispatcher also continued to receive calls about the deer on the highway, indicating Johnson never made it to the location.

The dispatcher told a shift supervisor, who drove to where Johnson’s patrol vehicle was located and found it parked in a gravel parking lot near 2807 Green Valley Road in Buffalo Township. The corporal got out of his car and noticed the front of Johnson’s vehicle was damaged from some sort of collision, according to court documents. As the supervisor began talking to Johnson, he noticed he was slurring his speech and was unstable on his feet, indicating possible intoxication, the complaint states.

The corporal took Johnson’s state-issued firearm and asked him to sit in the other vehicle. As the supervisor went back to lock Johnson’s patrol vehicle, he noticed a bottle of Admiral Nelson’s Premium spiced rum in a brown paper bag sitting on the front passenger seat, according to court documents.

Johnson was driven back to the state police barracks near Eighty Four, and he was brought to see the troop’s patrol supervisor sergeant, who wrote in court papers that he immediately noticed that Johnson was intoxicated. The sergeant took Johnson to Washington Hospital for a blood test, but he refused to give a sample, automatically triggering the DUI charge, according to charging documents.

While continuing to investigate and review dash cam video, the sergeant found that Johnson’s vehicle had struck a curb in a construction zone at Jefferson and Tyler avenues in Washington as he was being dispatched. He apparently drove the vehicle onto the sidewalk, but then reversed the SUV to get back onto the roadway, police said.

Johnson, 46, of South Franklin Township, was charged May 17 with driving under the influence and also cited for disregarding traffic lanes and careless driving. His preliminary hearing is tentatively scheduled before District Judge John Bruner on June 17 at 2 p.m. No lawyer was listed for Johnson in online court records.

An email sent to a Pennsylvania State Police spokesman near Harrisburg asking how long Johnson has been a trooper and his current employment status was not returned Thursday afternoon. In addition to working in Washington County, Johnson has also been stationed at the barracks in Waynesburg and Uniontown during his career.

It’s the third time since September that a state police trooper from the Washington County barracks has faced criminal charges.

Trooper Jeffrey Alan Tihey, 39, of North Strabane, was accused of being intoxicated in his unmarked police SUV on Sept. 30 when he allegedly struck a parked vehicle outside the township’s No. 3 fire station at 430 Johnson Road. Tihey’s blood-alcohol level was 0.24%, which is three times the legal limit to drive a vehicle, investigators said. Tihey, who is a criminal investigator and currently on restricted duty, is scheduled for a preliminary hearing at 3 p.m. July 15.

Another trooper, Dustin Eric Schumacher, was fired May 3 immediately after he pleaded guilty to resisting arrest following an altercation with another trooper in Claysville while Schumacher was off duty in the early hours of Sept. 27. Police were called for a disturbance outside a School Street home, and Schumacher was accused of pushing one trooper to the ground during the tussle. He was sentenced to two years of probation as part of the plea.