Moorings resident Joe Baird, who ran Indian River County for a dozen years as county administrator, was arrested on Friday for failing to report an accident or leave identification at the scene of a fender bender, and for resisting arrest without violence.

Both charges are misdemeanors assigned to County Judge Robyn Stone’s court, and Baird is out on $5,500 bail after roughly two hours in the county jail on Friday night.

From video footage, statements of more than a half-dozen witnesses, plus cellphone evidence, police say Baird was drinking at Bobby’s Restaurant and Lounge on Ocean Drive on Tuesday, March 31, and left when the bartender refused to serve him a third drink at around 8:30 p.m. He walked unsteadily to his black Acura, backed out and proceeded to turn left/south on Ocean Drive, right into oncoming traffic.

Northbound drivers were able to brake in time to avoid a collision, but Baird hit a signpost and a parked gray pickup truck belonging to Canadian tourists. Witnesses say Baird got out of the Acura, uttering “I can’t go to jail,” and abandoned his idling car in the middle of Ocean Drive. He went back into Bobby’s, telling people he’d just been in a crash and convinced the bartender to help him move the car. The bartender tried, but the car was too damaged.

Somewhere in the midst of all of this, Baird and a bystander spoke, and the bystander called a tow truck, and left money in Baird’s cup holder to cover the tow. The bystander confessed this to a police officer on the scene. Police waved off that tow truck because they needed to document the scene and impound the car for the investigation, but they documented the tow company phone number and the message summoning the truck.

“Mr. Baird is observed on video with a cell phone in his hand and appears to be actively speaking into it and using it throughout the 26 minutes after the crash and before he leaves the scene,” the arrest report states. “No phone call was received by the Vero Beach Police Department from Mr. Baird, reporting the crash. We were only notified by the victim when he found his damaged truck, which was 30 minutes after the crash itself occurred.”

No one answered the door when Vero police and Sherrif’s deputies went to Baird’s home to question him at 11 p.m. on the evening of the accident. Vero officers and deputies returned to the residence Friday, bringing along an arrest warrant.

The deputies had to serve the warrant because Baird’s home in The Moorings is outside Vero city limits. They slapped the resisting arrest charge on him because he did not go willingly.

Baird, 68, was charged with the same misdemeanor in 2012 for failing to leave identification in a crash with an unattended vehicle with property damage, but prosecutors declined to pursue that case.

While still running the county, Baird was arrested in May 2009 on DUI charges after refusing to take a breathalyzer test but failing roadside sobriety examinations on his way home from a luau fundraiser.

Baird’s defense attorney Bobby Guttridge successfully argued Baird suffered from vertigo and he was acquitted. At the time, the case was widely viewed as a superb display of criminal defense work, earning Baird the nickname “Vertigo Joe.”

After retiring from 27 years with the county in 2016, Baird was accused of stalking by an estranged girlfriend and arrested in June 2022, but those charges also failed to stick.

Baird’s arraignment in the new case is set for May 19. Guttridge will represent him.