Driver Somehow Makes It Home After Drinking 'Enough'

A man with some unerring homing instinct, even when clinically unconscious, somehow made it to his own driveway Sunday – but no farther.

At 2:50 a.m. Sunday, were called to an address in the 2100 block of North 60th Street on a citizen’s report of a possible drunken driver.

The caller said she had passed another driver on the street who was slumped over the steering wheel of his moving car. She then watched as it crossed West Lloyd Street and drifted over the center line, across the oncoming lane, into and over the curb and across a lawn before running into the corner of a house.

Police approached the car, which was stopped but still running and had ended up across the driveway after glancing off the house.

As three officers approached the car, it suddenly began to roll forward again toward a collision with the garage. All three officers shouted at the man to put his foot on the brake, which he did, just in time.

The arresting officer reported that when he again approached the man, he appeared extremely groggy and smelled of alcohol.

When he asked the man where he had been, he said, “At my house” – which could hardly have been the case, since, once he was identified as a 33-year-old Wauwatosa resident, it proved indeed to have been his own house he had run into.

Asked how much he had had to drink that night, he said, “Enough.”

Enough and then some, and then some more, apparently. The officer had to stop a field sobriety test when the man could not perform the steps, and he later tested an astonishing 0.33 blood alcohol content on an evidentiary breath test – more than four times the proscribed limit to drive in Wisconsin.

He told officers he had been drinking a combination of beer and vodka and had at least six of the concoctions, and he did not remember having driven anywhere or having had an accident. He was arrested for his first drunken driving offense.