Troopers make 31 DUI arrests over New Year’s Eve in Las Vegas area
Nevada Highway Patrol troopers arrested more than 30 drivers while Las Vegas rang in the new year, the department announced Wednesday afternoon.
Between 6 p.m. Tuesday and 6 a.m. Wednesday, the Highway Patrol arrested 31 drivers on suspicion of DUI, according to spokesman Jason Buratczuk.
While wrong-way driving crashes caused several deaths toward the end of 2019, the Highway Patrol said officers from Nevada Highway Patrol’s Southern Command were dispatched to 434 wrong-way driver calls, compared with 443 in 2018.
The first wrong-way driver call of the new year came in quickly, when officers were called to Interstate 11 at mile marker 9, near Buchanan Boulevard, at 1:17 a.m. Highway Patrol and Boulder City Police were unable to locate the driver.
Las Vegas police reported few arrests made during the celebration. Three people were arrested on suspicion of felony charges, 12 were arrested on suspicion of misdemeanors, and four others were issued citations.
Las Vegas police said their final statistics would be released Thursday. Calls to North Las Vegas and Henderson police regarding their DUI statistics were not immediately returned.
The Nevada Highway Patrol reported troopers stopped a wrong-way driver near the M Resort at the south end of the valley about 8:30 p.m.
No major incidents were reported on the Las Vegas Strip or Fremont Street as several hundred thousand people ushered in 2020 on a night with calm winds and a temperature of about 40 degrees.
Clark County transported 29 people to various hospitals during the celebration, said communications chief Erik Pappa.
Most of the people transported for medical care had consumed too much alcohol, one person was taken from Fremont Street for chest pains and another person on the Strip reported respiratory distress.
A neighborhood fireworks accident in east Las Vegas sent one person to the hospital with serious injuries shortly before midnight Tuesday.
The Las Vegas Fire Department released few details in a Twitter post other than to say it happened about 11:30 p.m. and the person was taken to University Medical Center.
Las Vegas police responded to 346 calls for fireworks between 3 p.m. Tuesday and 2 a.m. Wednesday. Of the calls, 267 were between 10 p.m. and 1:43 a.m, according to call logs released by the department.
The cleanup
After the fireworks celebrations were over, work began to clean up the Strip.
Work crews and street sweepers were seen on Las Vegas Boulevard South in front of the Wynn Resorts, with workers loading steel barricades onto flatbed semis.
Crews deployed 26 street sweepers, 13 from county public works and 13 from the Nevada Department of Transportation.
“Each year they pick up 30 to 40 cubic yards of trash (12 to 15 tons) between Mandalay Bay and Sahara Avenue,” Pappa said in an email. “To clean, sweepers move north on the Strip to Sahara (approximately four miles) and intersections are reopened. As we pass through each intersection our (Clark County Public Works) Road Division crews start opening hard closure gates at each cross street, allowing traffic to come onto Las Vegas Boulevard about one mile at a time.”
Contact Glenn Puit at gpuit@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0390. Follow @GlennatRJ on Twitter. Contact Sabrina Schnur at sschnur@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0278. Follow @sabrina schnur on Twitter. Review-Journal digital producer Marvin Clemons contributed to this report.