NORTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. (WPRI) — Police throughout Rhode Island increased their efforts of cracking down on DUIs over Labor Day weekend.

“We’d rather arrest someone and save their lives than, unfortunately, what happens much too often,” North Kingstown police Lt. Donald Barrington, who helps lead the state’s DUI taskforce, told 12 News.

Barrington described this type of enforcement over Labor Day weekend as requiring an all-hands-on-deck approach.

“End of the summer, people having their last bash,” Barrington said. “Their out there drinking and, unfortunately, making bad decisions and driving when they shouldn’t be.”

Barrington added that departments had extra officers looking for impaired drivers over the weekend.

“It’s kind of like a beehive affect,” he said. “You’re never getting away from the police out there.”

According to RI State Police, 13 DUI arrests were made throughout the state so far over the holiday weekend.

NEXT: Cranston man accused of DUI crash with child in backseat

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LGBTQ the Music

Sunday 8

The 2024 Pride Vermont Parade & Festival once again fills the streets of the Queen City with LGBTQ joy, love and resistance. Starting with a procession through downtown Burlington and ending with a beautiful blowout in Waterfront Park, the celebration features live music, drag performances, burlesque dancing and everything else over the rainbow.

Stick Season

Tuesday 10

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• File: Daria Bishop
• Ethan Tapper

Ethan Tapper, the beloved former Chittenden County forester turned author, launches his new book, How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World, at Burlington City Hall Auditorium. Hosted by Phoenix Books and moderated by Bridget “the Bird Diva” Butler, this celebration of Tapper and his work invites attendees to move toward a radical new understanding of our relationship with nature.

Live, Laugh, Love

Thursday 5

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Burlington Dyke Night and comedian Tal Friedman present Strapped-In!, a new comedy showcase series at Burlington’s Vermont Comedy Club. Celebrating all forms of queer expression, this inaugural installment features standup, drag, burlesque, performance art, and live music by the likes of Katniss Everqueer, Nic Sisk and Pete Zapparti.

Herbivore Hour

Friday 6

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• Courtesy
• Moos & Brews & Cocktails Too!

At the end of a long, late-summer week, the bovines of Billings Farm & Museum in Woodstock are ready to kick back. Locals who wish to join them are invited to Moos & Brews & Cocktails Too!, featuring a stacked menu of local food and drink options, live music, historic lawn games, horse-drawn wagon rides, butter churning, and plenty of Jersey cow kisses.

Curtain Call

Saturday 7

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Lost Nation Theater at Montpelier City Hall starts the fall season with an especially autumnal fundraiser, the Harvest Moon Cabaret. Local luminaries, including Dan Bruce, Taryn Noelle, Kathleen Keenan, and the casts of LNT productions The Prom and The Tempest, show off everything from music to theater in a fabulous phantasmagoria.

Quiet, Please

Saturday 7

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• Courtesy Of Dan Higgens
• The Quietest Year

Local filmmaker Karen Akins screens her award-winning documentary The Quietest Year at Stowe Mountain Resort’s Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center. Drawing on Vermonters’ stories of roaring F-35s, unregulated recreational shooting and incessant cock-a-doodle-doos, the film investigates the links between noise pollution and health. A Q&A follows.

Life Cycle

Ongoing

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• Artwork by Jane Davies

Rupert artist Jane Davies‘ latest solo exhibition, “Re-Assembly,” is on view at Middlebury’s Edgewater Gallery at the Falls. The collection features abstract mixed-media paintings that make use of discarded materials from Davies’ previous projects; incorporate bold, unique colors and textures; and raise questions about extracting meaning from a chaotic world.

A University of Delaware freshman, who had just finished her first day of classes on Tuesday, was killed by a speeding motorcyclist fleeing a traffic stop, police said.

Noelia Gomez, 18, from Clark, New Jersey, was struck in front of her friends and classmates just before midnight.  

Police identified Brian Briddle, 27, as the motorcyclist.

He was arrested and charged with second-degree murder, possession of a deadly weapon during the commission of a felony, disregarding a police officer’s signal, driving a special vehicle without a special license, operating an unregistered motor vehicle, and three counts of failing to stop at a red light, Newark, Delaware, police said.

DETAILS EMERGE ABOUT RICE UNIVERSITY STUDENT GUNNED DOWN ON FIRST DAY OF CLASSES IN APPARENT MURDER-SUICIDE

When a University of Delaware police officer attempted to stop him for a traffic offense, Briddle disregarded the officer’s emergency lights and fled at a “high rate of speed,” Newark police said. Within one minute of the attempt to stop him, Briddle struck Gomez, who was on a crosswalk near the college campus, they said.

The officer was not pursuing the motorcyclist at the time of the crash and had turned off his emergency lights when the rider sped off, police added.

Bystanders tried to save Gomez, but they were unsuccessful, and she was pronounced dead at the scene. 

Briddle was thrown from the motorcycle as a result of the crash, but his motorcycle continued onto the sidewalk and struck four other pedestrians. Three of them suffered minor injuries, while the fourth was transported to a nearby hospital with injuries not believed to be life-threatening, police said.

Briddle also endured non-life-threatening injuries and was treated at a nearby hospital. 

MURDERED IDAHO STUDENTS HONORED AS CAMPUS HOPES TO ‘BRING THAT LIGHT BACK’ NEARLY TWO YEARS LATER

Noelia Gomez was pronounced dead at the scene. (Google Street View)

Briddle was taken into custody on Thursday. He is being held at the Howard R. Young Correctional Institution in Wilmington on a $362,005 bail. Police are still investigating the crash. 

Gomez recently graduated with honors from Union Catholic High School in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, and she enjoyed dancing and cheerleading, according to an obituary for her. She was interested in finance and business, according to her LinkedIn profile. 

Exterior of the University of Delaware.

“Incidents such as this are unimaginably tragic,” University of Delaware President Dennis Assanis said in a statement. “We cannot express enough how sorry we are for the family, friends, and greater community as we are all so deeply shaken by the sudden loss of one of our own. Our hearts are very heavy today.”