Every year, American motorists are responsible for around a million driving under the influence (DUI) arrests. It’s a sobering statistic (no pun intended). However, it’s especially tragic when the crime involves children, like a woman in Kanawha County, Wisconsin, who passed out drunk in her vehicle with five young kids in the car.
The Wisconsin woman got a DUI after police found her unconscious with five children in her car, including a 2-month-old
Police in Kanawha County, Wisconsin responded to reports of a woman falling asleep in her car at a fast food restaurant. Upon their arrival, the officers found a woman drunkenly slumped over her vehicle’s center console with an assortment of empty IPA beer cans strewn about. More troublingly, they also found multiple kids unattended in the vehicle.
According to WSAZ 3 News, the 40-year-old woman had five children in the car, ranging in age from 2 months to 6 years old. Worse yet, the officers found the youngest child unsecured and sitting precariously. One responding officer expressed that they were concerned the young child could have suffocated in the vehicle’s filth and trash.
As expected, the sleeping motorist was a DUI suspect. The officers on the scene noted the smell of alcohol, a common indicator of an inebriated driver. After police officers were able to wake her from her driver’s seat slumber, they noticed she had bloodshot eyes, slurred speech, and couldn’t answer simple questions.
In many cases where police pull over a motorist under the suspicion of drunk driving, they’ll resort to a Standardized Field Sobriety Test (SFST). The SFST is typically three individual tests to assess a driver’s balance, reaction time, and cognition. However, in some cases (like this one), a driver’s drunkenness is obvious.
So, you might be wondering whether the children in the car will make things worse for the driver. You’d be right. In addition to her DUI, police charged her with five counts of felony child neglect. Mother of the year, indeed.
