What Happened
Southampton Town Police announced on Sunday, October 11, 2026, the arrest of Ethan Endress, 22, of Middle Island, following a single-vehicle crash involving a utility pole on Schwenks Rd in Watermill. An investigation revealed that Endress had been operating the vehicle in an intoxicated condition, police said. He was arrested, transported to police headquarters, processed, and held for morning arraignment. He was charged with Driving While Intoxicated, a misdemeanor. No injuries were reported. The arrest was documented under case number ST26049525 by Sgt. J. Berini.
Patch (Southampton, NY) also covered the arrest, reporting that “a Middle Island man was arrested and charged with driving while intoxicated after a crash in Water Mill Sunday, police said.”
Local Crash Record
The Town of Southampton, which includes Water Mill, recorded 2,595 reported crashes in 2024, per New York State DMV crash data (2,240 in 2021, 2,292 in 2022, and 2,458 in 2023); of its 9,585 reported crashes from 2021 through 2024, 2,049 involved an injury and 31 were fatal. These figures cover the town as a whole and are context only; the DMV codes crashes to the town level, not to individual hamlets.
Long Island Traffic has previously reported on two other incidents in Water Mill: a fatal pedestrian crash and a DWI and fleeing-the-scene arrest, per Long Island Traffic’s incident registry.
What Officials Have Said Next
Southampton Town Police said Endress was held for morning arraignment following processing at police headquarters. The arraignment was scheduled for the morning after Sunday, October 11, 2026; no outcome has been reported in the supplied evidence.
What we don’t know yet: no source establishes what time Sunday the crash occurred, and no source reports the outcome of the morning arraignment.
Sources
- Southampton Town Police Department (official record)
- Patch