Rivera

BEVERLY — A traffic stop conducted by the Randolph County Sheriff’s Office led to a felony arrest for third-offense DUI.

Gilberto Santana Rivera, 56, is being held in the Tygart Valley Regional Jail on a $5,000 cash-only bond.

According to a Randolph County Sheriff’s Office press release, Deputy T.J. Knotts was conducting road patrol in the Beverly area when he observed a black Mercedes Benz with a Florida license plate, with an altered registration sticker.

The release states that Randolph E-911 then advised Knotts that the license plate on the Mercedes should actually have been displayed on a Ford vehicle, and that it had expired in December.

According to the press release, the driver, Rivera, pulled directly into the Citizens Bank parking lot after noticing Knotts behind him in his marked Sheriff’s Office patrol car. The deputy made contact with Rivera and told him he was being stopped for improper registration.

Rivera advised the deputy that he did not have a license and presented Knotts with an expired insurance card, according to the release.

After identifying Rivera, deputies asked Randolph E-911 to run a criminal history on him, which yielded multiple driving revoked for DUI arrests, according to the release.

Police learned that Rivera had two prior driving revoked for DUI convictions, one through the Pendleton County Magistrate Court in 2015, and another through Pocahontas County Magistrate Court in 2017.