A Zamboni driver at a Fargo, North Dakota, hockey rink has been convicted after being arrested by local police for driving his icing machine while drunk, reports say.
Steven James Anderson, 27, was arrested in January during a high school hockey game when school officials saw he was driving the machine erratically in the rink (proper sober Zamboni driving pictured above). Police were called and the driver was arrested after being given a field sobriety test.
Anderson was convicted and sentenced to nine days in jail this week. The court also fined him $1,500 and ordered him to undergo a state-sponsored sobriety program.
There was some confusion as to whether the state’s laws of what constitutes a “vehicle” would apply to a Zamboni, but Municipal Court Judge Stephen Dawson insisted that the law does cover vehicles.
Anderson’s DWI arrest may not come as a shock to those who compiled the most recent list of the states that drink the most beer.
On the 2014 list, North Dakota ranked in as the foremost beer-drinking state with a per capita consumption of 43.4 gallons. The state also ranked second for per capita alcohol intake and percentage of binge drinking.
There are several other cases of Zamboni drivers being charged with driving their icing machines while drunk. Two other examples are Joel Bruss, who was citied for drunk Zamboni-ing in Minneapolis in 2012, and 69-year-old John Peragallo who was arrested for DWI in New Jersey in 2005.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
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