LEWISTON — A Mexico man who made headlines a decade ago when he jumped from a third-floor balcony while fleeing from police was charged again last week with escaping from Lewiston police.

Norman “Bo” Thompson, 46, of 9 Oxford St., appeared in 8th District Court on Monday in handcuffs on five related charges, including two felonies.

He was arrested by local police on Thanksgiving Day after a car and foot chase.

Officer Nicholas Meserve wrote in an affidavit that he spotted Thompson driving a Saturn on Jefferson Street on Thursday night and blocked his path with his cruiser. A second officer positioned his cruiser on the driver’s side of the car. Meserve got out of his cruiser and ordered Thompson to shut off the car and get out.

Instead, Thompson began to back the car up until he looked in his rearview mirror and saw an Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Department cruiser driving toward him with lights flashing, Meserve wrote.

Thompson shifted the car into drive and accelerated toward Meserve’s cruiser, managing to squeeze between it and a snowbank, damaging the rear fender of the cruiser, Meserve wrote.

All three cruisers pursued Thompson and found his car in a snowbank. Thompson had fled on foot down an embankment toward a wooded area. Police tracked his footprints in the snow in the direction of the Lewiston High School tennis courts and found him hiding behind a large snowplow, Meserve wrote.

Meserve wrote that he pursued Thompson initially because he had been wanted on a warrant from Franklin County for felony theft and a probation hold.

Thompson was charged with eluding an officer and passing a roadblock, both Class C felonies, each punishable by up to five years in prison. He also was charged with criminal mischief, driving to endanger and failing to stop for an officer, all misdemeanors.

He is being held at the Androscoggin County Jail in lieu of $10,000 cash bail or $50,000 real estate. A judge ordered him not to operate any motor vehicle without a license. He was provided a court-appointed attorney.

Thompson was featured in a Sun Journal profile in 2009 in which he blamed his lengthy criminal record on drug abuse. He had pleaded to a dozen crimes for which he was sentenced to 15 years in prison, with all of that time suspended except what he’d already spent in jail. He was put on probation for five years during which he said he planned to straighten out his life.

“I don’t think I’ll get in trouble again. I’m all set. I got too much to lose,” he had told the Sun Journal in an interview in Portland.

He’d gotten his driver’s license back. He was sober and he had a place of his own.

He had been diagnosed as bipolar for which he was taking medication, and receiving counseling for substance abuse and anger management.

He was captured on film leaping from a third-floor balcony of a Lewiston apartment building in 2007 as he fled from police after skipping out on bail.

His criminal history dates back to 1990 and includes 42 convictions of felonies and misdemeanors.

cwilliams@sunjournal.com

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