AUBURN — A jury convicted a Mexico man Thursday on all charges stemming from a police car and foot chase near Lewiston High School that ended in his arrest on Thanksgiving Day last year.

After deliberating for an hour, an Androscoggin County Superior Court jury returned guilty verdicts on two felonies and three misdemeanors against Norman “Bo” Thompson, 47, of 9 Oxford St., after a daylong trial.

Assistant District Attorney Katherine Bozeman presented evidence that Lewiston police had been dispatched to stop Thompson on Thanksgiving night, Nov. 22. When police cruisers surrounded the Saturn sedan Thompson had been driving on Jefferson Street in Lewiston, he backed up the car then drove past one of the cruisers, hitting it as he appeared to flee the makeshift roadblock.

Police chased Thompson for less than a mile where they found the car abandoned in a snowbank. He had apparently fled on foot through nearby woods, according to courtroom testimony from officers at the scene.

He was found a short time later hiding under a snowplow and was arrested.

On Thursday, a jury found him guilty of eluding an officer and passing a roadblock, each charge a Class C felony punishable by up to five years in prison. He also was convicted of driving to endanger and failure to stop for an officer, each one a Class E misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail. The final charge, criminal mischief, is a Class D misdemeanor that carries a penalty of up to 364 days in jail.

The judge will impose a sentence later.

During a pretrial hearing in late August, Thompson’s attorney, Paul Corey, had sought to block evidence from trial because one of those involved in Thompson’s arrest had been a Lewiston officer who had been implicated as someone who had stolen drugs at the scene of a different case and had later died from a drug overdose.

Corey had filed motions challenging the possible use at trial of that officer’s testimony during a January probation violation hearing because, in part, that officer was deceased and couldn’t be cross-examined as a witness, Corey had written in his motions.

In one of those motions, Corey wrote that prosecutors had provided to him a summary report and a video in July. The report states the officer had died from acute fentanyl intoxication and that he “was an addict who consumed illegal drugs daily for at least two years prior to his death.”

On Wednesday, Bozeman filed a motion aimed at blocking Corey from introducing any evidence relating to that officer’s drug-related history that is the subject of a court-issued protective order.

“Some of this evidence, at least tangentially, was elicited through questions of officers at the suppression hearing in this matter,” Bozeman wrote in her motion. She wrote that the officers testified that they had no knowledge of the questions asked of them related to the officer having reportedly stolen drug paraphernalia from Thompson.

The judge ruled Thursday in favor of Bozeman’s motion.

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