PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Joshua Lipton was charged in a drunken driving crash that seriously injured a woman about 10:50 pm on Wednesday, October 11, 2006. Two weeks later the 20-year-old college junior attended a Halloween party where he was photographed dressed as a prisoner, showing him in a black-and-white striped prison shirt and an orange jumpsuit labeled “Jail Bird”with his tongue hanging out.
Those pictures were published on a Facebook page, and ended up as evidence for Jay Sullivan, the prosecutor handling Lipton’s drunken-driving case, who described Lipton as an unrepentant DUI driver/partier who lived it up while his victim recovered in the hospital. In May 2008, the judge agreed, ruling the pictures depraved when sentencing Lipton to two years in prison.
Joshua Lipton had minor injuries in the three-car crash at Douglas Pike (Route 7) near Lydia Ann Road [MAP/SAT], but the woman he hit, Jade R. Combies, 20, ended up in critical condition at Rhode Island Hospital after she was extricated from the car by Smithfield Fire Department. Four other people received minor injuries.