Alan Michael Fleckenstein
SANTA BARBARA — With the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s holiday seasons afoot, local area law enforcement has engaged in a concerted media outreach effort to alert drivers to the fact that enforcement targeting impaired drivers will be at its annually rigorous maximum effort over the next several weeks.
Either hoping to avoid that impending clamp-down on drinking drivers or ignoring those publicized warnings in favor of getting an early start on his own Holiday “celebrations,” 31-year-old Solvang resident Alan Michael Fleckenstein apparently made what could easily have been a fatal mistake on the evening of November 20th by getting behind the wheel of his pickup truck while seriously inebriated.
It was nearly midnight on the 20th when Santa Barbara County emergency personnel responded to the report of a vehicle accident on a foothill thoroughfare just north of the city.
According to CHP spokesman Officer Jonathan Gutierrez, when SBSD patrol units arrived along with local area CHP officers, they found Fleckenstein detained by neighborhood witnesses and his pickup truck “parked on top of a pair of motorcycles and another parked pickup truck”, all of which were unoccupied at the time of the crash.
Suffering minor injuries, Fleckenstein was transported by ambulance to Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital for treatment, where he was booked on charges of DUI, with his bail set at $10,000.
Photo: Courtesy Santa Barbara County Jail Booking
