Driver finds man sleeping on a Maine road at night

Fallen branches, darting deer and ambling porcupines are some of the obstacles Maine drivers expect to see on the road at night. A sleeping person is not.

Marshal Daniel of Island Falls was driving on Milo Road in Dover-Foxcroft at about 11:30 p.m. Friday when he noticed something that looked like a body in the opposite lane.

He hadn’t seen it until he was passing it, so he did a U-turn to get a better look and started recording video from a cell phone he keeps mounted in his vehicle.

It was a man lying flat on his back across the roadway with his arms outstretched above his head.

Daniel, who is a nurse, walked up to him and rubbed his sternum with his knuckles, a technique that he said is uncomfortable enough to rouse most people.

The man came to and Daniel asked what he was on. If it was fentanyl, Daniel had Narcan.

“He says, ‘no, man, I’m just on alcohol and I was tired,’” Daniel said. “I was like, ‘you realize you’re laying in the middle of the road?’”

Daniel helped the man up and said he seemed steady enough on his feet when he ultimately walked off toward nearby houses.

In the video Daniel posted to his Facebook page, as the men walk back toward Daniel’s stopped vehicle, an SUV zips by, curving around the lane where the man had been lying a moment earlier. On the dark road, Daniel guessed the driver wouldn’t have seen him until it was too late.

“If he had been in my lane, he would have been dead,” he said. “There’s no way I could have seen him in time.”

Daniel said he didn’t report the incident to police because he didn’t think it should end up on the record of the man, who he guessed was in his late teens or early 20s.

A representative of the Dover-Foxcroft Police Department said they were not aware of any similar incidents in town, and that best practice would be to call 911 in case the person needed medical attention.