Leave it to the drunk guy

After a weekend worth of speculation, the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Department has finally released details about the “crime scene” at the Saratoga West trailer park. Contrary to The Saratogian’s report Saturday, the incident didn’t have anything much of anything to do with homicides or rapes. Then again, it also didn’t have anything to do with suicide.

Instead, leave it to the hammered guy to throw everyone a curveball.

Undersheriff Michael Woodcock reported Monday that a 25-year-old Ballston Spa man apparently wander into the trailer at lot 85 bleeding profusely from three-inch gash on his dome. The man lived at a different trailer park just a bit further down the road and, in his intoxicated stupor, wrongly chose Saratoga West as his final destination. After taking a brief nap and depositing a fair amount of blood around the home, he wandered off.

And in his travels, he managed to shed his hat, a shirt and his identification around the trailer park for the super-sleuths of the sheriff’s department to track him down four days later. That’s some good work, Lou.

Apparently, the man was so tanked that he didn’t even remember wandering into the trailer or ever being in the trailer period. Neither did the trailer’s resident, who returned to find the bloody scene Thursday afternoon, much to his chagrin. But all in all, there appears to be no real crime committed, as the drunken fellow didn’t break into the home or take anything while there; in fact, he actually left some free blood and a T-shirt.

So to recap, no murder, no real crime, just four days of investigation, a bloody mess, and what was likely a real bad hangover for a poor sot with quite the headache in the morning. Hopefully, investigators will cut their losses and realize there’s no way to properly mete out justice in this case through the courts. At the very most, they should insist the guy foot the cleaning bill.

After all the hype, one would think The Saratogian would have been all about adding a bit of humor to pot, maybe to ease some of the tension built up over four days. Instead, 10,000 loyal subscribers got this double-byline gem, which despite the dramatic change in tone of the story, still includes superfluous quotes from trailer park residents concerned about a killer or some other nefarious character on the loose.

There is hope, however, that The Saratogian and any other media source that jumped on the story learn a valuable lesson about jumping to conclusions before someone in the know goes on the record with details. Then again, maybe someone should just buy them all a “jump to conclusions” mat for the holidays to help the editors make key news decissions.