Police: Ben Wallace ‘Knew He Was in the Wrong’


The police claim that Ben Wallace fessed up to them that he shouldn’t have been drinking and driving, and carrying his wife’s handgun in the car. From the Detroit News: “The vehicle drove over the fog line on the right multiple times,’ Officer Thomas Smyly wrote in his report, noting he initiated a traffic stop and the Escalade pulled into a Kroger parking lot. Smyly said he ‘immediately detected the odor of intoxicants’ when questioning the driver, Wallace, who said he had consumed about four beers over the past two hours at a club. He was accompanied a friend, who also was determined to have been drinking and unable to legally drive, police said. Wallace said he knew the English alphabet and could count, and ‘should still be able to walk in a straight line and stand on one foot.’ Wallace was given a preliminary breath test. When he exceeded levels, he was taken into custody, handcuffed with the use of two sets of handcuffs due to his size (6-foot-8, 240 pounds). Smyly said he noticed several rounds of large caliber ammunition in the closed middle console of the front seat and saw a backpack in the rear seat. He took Wallace into custody and advised another officer to look for a gun, subsequently found in the backpack. In an interview room, Wallace told police the handgun belonged to his wife, was registered only to her, and he had placed it in the backpack for protection before driving from Virginia back to Michigan the day before. He said he had ‘completely forgot the gun was in his backpack and when he got back to Michigan went out with his buddy and had some drinks …,’ according to a police report written by Lt. Mark Paquin, who said Wallace said ‘if he had known tonight was going to end up this way, he would have done things differently. Mr. Wallace said he knew he was in the wrong, and he shouldn’t have had the gun, he also told me that he was a criminal justice major in college,’ Lt. Mark Paquin wrote in his report.”