What happened to a 29-year-old Dallas Center man one day last week might have seemed like a bad dream if not for a citation to appear in court.

Wednesday started off badly for Joshua Aaron Berger of 24531 North Ave. West Des Moines Police Officer Shawn Miller had to prod Berger awake about 8:15 a.m. as he lay curled up with his head near a toilet in a public restroom at Jordan Creek Town Center.

And then the situation really went downhill.

Police had been called to the mall after a security officer reported a man passed out in a public restroom. Miller said in his report that Berger was noticably intoxicated and smelled of alcohol, but he told him he was free to leave the mall with a sober third party. Berger called his sister and agreed to wait in the food court area for her ot pick him up.

But before she arrived to pick up her brother, Berger left. Mall security reported him wandering around the lake area. So Miller responded to the mall for the second time in an hour, and this time he charged Berger with public intoxication.

Berger May Have Slept in Toilet Stall Overnight

Miller wrote in his report that during his initial investigation, he could see Berger sleeping in the stall, but apparently he was in a deep enough sleep that he did not hear Miller's repeated yells to awaken him.

When Miller finally did coax Berger awake, he was reportedly unstable on his feet, was able to locate his identification only after emptying all of his pockets of their contents, and he wasn’t sure where he was or how long he’d been there.

Berger told the officer that he was at Merle Hay Mall in Urbandale and that he had been dropped off there at 11:30.

“I asked him, ‘11:30 last night?’” Miller wrote in his report. “He said, ‘No, 11:30 today.’”

It wasn’t yet 9 a.m. Police still don’t know when the man got to the mall or if he had been there overnight.

Berger refused to take a sobriety test to measure his blood-alcohol content.

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