Rhode Island Scholars
Caleb Chafee, the son of former Rhode Island GOP Senator and current independent Gov. Lincoln Chafee, has gotten himself into quite a pickle.
On Memorial Day weekend, police say, 18-year-old Caleb threw himself a graduation party at his family’s compound. Caleb had just graduated from Portsmouth Abbey School, a boarding school in Portsmouth, R.I.
According to the police report, young Chafee and his friends began gathering at the compound around 1 p.m., and the suds flowed throughout the afternoon.
By 6:45 p.m., however, a highly intoxicated and nearly unresponsive young woman who had attended the party was admitted to Kent Hospital in Warwick by ambulance.
Caleb — who was arrested for trying to buy alcohol in April of this year — requested that nobody call the emergency team to help the young woman, at least until they were off the property, according to police reports.
The office of Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse confirmed last week that the Democrat’s son was at the party briefly and had left several hours before the young woman became sick. Whitehouse defeated then-Sen. Chafee in 2006 to claim the seat that was long occupied by his father, the late John Chafee.
In a statement to police, one partygoer said that after the young woman began getting sick by the pool, Caleb said he didn’t want anyone to know that they were at his house.
The partygoer said Caleb told the girl’s friends “to call 911 only after they were off his property.”
A group of young men carried the intoxicated girl to a car and placed her inside. The young lady was “unable to walk and nearly unconscious at the time she was placed in the vehicle.”
At least one of the girls who removed the sick girl off the Chafee property had also been drinking, according to police. One mile away from the Chafee compound, the group stopped to call 911.
At the time the young woman was admitted to the hospital, she “was unresponsive to questions from rescue personnel.”
When the police began investigating the incident later that night, they met with the governor, his wife and their son.
According to the police record, Mrs. Chafee said that she didn’t want her son to answer any questions without the family attorney being present.
Under advisement from the family attorney, Caleb said that he would “exercise his Fifth Amendment right and not answer any questions.”
Interestingly, the day after the party in question, a judge granted a motion to expunge Caleb’s record of the earlier charge of attempting to buy liquor under age.
Read the redacted police report.