LIVERMORE FALLS — A Portland man was arrested Monday after he tried to elude police and crashed a rented car into a tree on upper Baldwin Street, Police Chief Ernest Steward Jr. said Tuesday.

Sgt. Vernon Stevens arrested Mohamed Adan Abdulrahman, 31, of Portland on a felony charge of eluding an officer and issued a summons for charges of failure to provide correct name and address and operating after license suspension.

Prior to the arrest, an Androscoggin County dispatcher alerted Stevens to reports of a vehicle operating erratically on Route 4. Stevens drove his cruiser behind the car, which was stopped on Bridge Street for a train to cross.

Stevens followed the car up Church Street and was trying to get the driver to pull over. The car stopped at the top of a hill and when Stevens went to ask the driver for his license and vehicle registration, he took off at a high rate of speed, Steward said.

The car headed up Baldwin Street, located off Route 133, and kept going, hit snowbanks and finally a tree near Munsey Road, he said. The doors of the car were pinned shut between snowbanks but the driver, identified as Abdulrahman, got out through the back windows, Steward said.

The driver was not cooperative with police and refused to give Stevens information, Steward said.

Stevens, assisted by Jay officer Dylan Rider, was able to handcuff Abdulrahman. When police went to put the driver into the cruiser, it appeared he was going in and out of consciousness, said Steward, who also responded to the 2:25 p.m. accident. 

A NorthStar EMS ambulance was called. Since Abdulrahman was under arrest, Stevens rode with him in the ambulance to Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston. Abdulrahman was uncooperative at the hospital, Steward said.

Once he was cleared from CMMC, Lewiston Police Department assisted in taking Abdulrahman to the Androscoggin County Jail in Auburn.

Abdulrahman was being held there Tuesday morning on $1,000 cash bail.

He is scheduled to appear in Lewiston District Court on May 16.

A conviction on an eluding charge is punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

dperry@sunjournal.com