Davis Ruark, State’s Attorney for Wicomico County was found at 5 AM this morning passed out in a government bathroom stall. His face was as red as an Irish beet, janitor Jesus Gonzalez said, and he appeared to have been drinking alcohol.

Assistant Janitor Fernando Guerrero said, speaking in a thick accent,  “This is how we often find him. The other day he passed out face first into a lunch plate of alcoholic vomit.”

“We prop him up, take a wet cloth to his forehead, give him a potato, and after a while he gets up and goes away.”

Past indiscretions of drunkenness by Davis Ruark have been kept extremely quiet by the area’s pro-drunkenness advocates.

Local Salisbury newspaper The Daily Times and television station WMDT have deleted all articles on Mr. Ruark’s drunken debauchery, including a drunk driving arrest incurred on February 22, 2008:

“Wicomico County State’s Attorney Arrested”
OCEAN CITY, Md. (AP)

Wicomico County State’s Attorney Davis R. Ruark apologized Saturday for his drunken driving arrest the night before, calling it “a tremendous error in judgment” and saying he hoped the community would forgive him.

Ruark, 52, was pulled over Friday night in Ocean City after officers observed him speeding and crossing the center line, police said.

After failing field sobriety tests, Ruark was arrested and taken to Ocean City police headquarters, where he agreed to take a breath test and was found to have a blood-alcohol concentration greater than .08 percent, Maryland’s legal threshold for drunken driving, police said.

“This, by far, is the saddest day of my professional career,” Ruark told a small group of reporters Saturday, according to The (Salisbury) Daily Times. “I made a tremendous error in judgment.”

Ruark said he would attempt to get his case heard as soon as possible. In the meantime, he said he would not personally handle any alcohol- or drug-related cases that involve vehicles.

He said he hoped he would be forgiven in time. “This will never, ever happen again,” he said.

It was Ruark’s first drunken driving arrest, and court records show no other run-ins with the law. However, his 22-year-old son, Davis Lee Ruark, was arrested for driving under the influence last year. Prosecutors did not pursue the charge — in part, Ruark said, because his son was under consideration for entry into the armed forces. (wjz.com)