Breath Alcohol Testing Mobile to be Dedicated to Sgt. Douglas Weddleton

The Massachusetts State Police tomorrow (Tuesday, Oct. 4) will dedicate the Department’s second Breath Alcohol Testing (BAT) Mobile in the name of Sergeant Douglas A. Weddleton, the state trooper who was killed on Route 95 in Mansfield last year while protecting a road construction crew.

State Public Safety and Security Secretary Mary Elizabeth Heffernan and Colonel Marian J. McGovern, Superintendent of the State Police, will dedicate the BAT Mobile in a ceremony that will be attended by Sgt. Weddleton’s widow and four sons, as well as troopers who served with him in the department’s ballistics unit and at the Foxboro Barracks.

The dedication will be held tomorrow (Tuesday, Oct. 4) in front of Campanelli Stadium, home of the Brockton Rox baseball team, 1 Feinberg Way, Brockton, at 11 a.m. Media are invited.

The State Police Breath Alcohol Testing (BAT) Mobiles are command posts that are deployed to sobriety checkpoints that the department deploys many weekend nights across the state to enforce impaired driving laws. The department currently has two BAT Mobiles and runs approximately 80 checkpoints per year.

Two motorists are under indictment and awaiting trial on motor vehicle homicide charges related to Sgt. Weddleton’s death in June 2010.

The department’s first BAT Mobile is dedicated in the name of Trooper Ellen Engelhardt, who was severely injured by a drunk driver in 2003. Trooper Engelhardt died as a result of her injuries earlier this year; the man who hit her is facing charges of motor vehicle homicide.