AUGUSTA — A Canton woman with a history of stealing vehicles now is accused of running away from a specialty jail program aimed at helping people deal with criminal behavior and addiction.

Nicole M. Dyment, 19, who was one of 12 women participating in the Criminogenic Addiction Recovery Academy Program at the Kennebec County jail now faces charges of escape and refusing to submit to arrest. She also was removed from the program, said Sheriff Ryan Reardon.

A judge at the Capital Judicial Center on Tuesday ordered Dyment held in lieu of $1,000 bail on those two charges and urged her to contact her lawyer immediately, saying the charges are serious.

Dyment and other participants in the program were doing yard work Sunday morning outside the sheriff’s office on State Street under the supervision of three officers with the Kennebec Sheriff’s Office: Gabrielle Mathieu, Karen Vanderwerf and Sgt. Joel Eldridge.

Eldridge described the events in an affidavit in support of Dyment’s arrest.

“I had spoken to her about her being where she shouldn’t be and possibly keeping a cigarette,” Eldridge wrote in the affidavit. “She was talking to the other CARA participants and began yelling and swearing.”

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She then “took off running,” he wrote.

Eldridge said he ran after her and yelled three times for her to stop.

“She continued to run and when I got close enough I was able to grab her legs and she fell to the ground,” he wrote.

She was then handcuffed and arrested.

Reardon said Dyment was caught as she ran up the hill in an area between the jail and the sheriff’s office on the south side of the County Government Building.

“This is the first time anybody’s tried to run off from it,” Reardon said, adding the program will continue as usual. “This is an isolated incident. You wouldn’t change policy out of one incident. Each inmate is different, and the whole group shouldn’t suffer because of it.”

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People have been dismissed from the CARA program for other reasons, he said.

Along with doing work on county property, CARA participants also do work with community organizations in the community integration part of the program.

Dyment, previously of Auburn, had been put into the Kennebec County program as a result of a deferred disposition arrangement to resolve all the charges against her. That hearing took place in Springvale District Court, according to David Bobrow, the attorney who represented her there.

He said Dyment pleaded guilty to two sets of misdemeanor charges, and the sentencing was continued on those matters, with conditions that permitted a bed-to-bed transfer into the CARA program.

“The CARA program, under the circumstances we were presented with here, was the appropriate placement,” Bobrow said on Wednesday.

This session of the CARA program started March 28 with a dozen women participating. Now 11 remain.

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On Wednesday, Reardon said Dyment was there for 90 days on charges of driving to endanger, violating conditions of release, operating a vehicle without a license and operating under the influence.

Dyment had been charged with stealing a vehicle from a man who left it running while he went into a restaurant to pick up food in February.

Prior to that, in December 2015, Dyment was charged in connection with crashing a stolen Angry Orchard delivery truck into the side of a barn in Limerick. Police at the time said the vehicle was stolen in Portland. Dyment told police she was drunk and high on heroin.

Betty Adams — 621-5631

badams@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @betadams


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